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THE WARREN COMMISSION CULT

THE WARREN COMMISSION CULT

& THE MEME OF TRUE BELIEVERS

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”~John F. Kennedy

IN ALL LIKELIHOOD there does not exist a single American community where reside 12 men or women, good and true, who presume that Lee Harvey Oswald did not assassinate President Kennedy. No more savage comment can be made in reference to the breakdown of the Anglo-Saxon system of jurisprudence. At the very foundation of our judicial operation lies a cornerstone which shelters the innocent and guilty alike against group hysteria, manufactured evidence, overzealous law enforcement officials, in short, against those factors which militate for an automated, prejudged, neatly packaged verdict of guilty. It is the sacred right of every citizen accused of committing a crime to the presumption of innocence.[…]That which intervenes between the zealous investigator and the jury is due process of law, developed at great cost in human life and liberty over the years. It is the right to have irrelevant testimony barred. It is the right to have facts, not hopes or thoughts or wishes or prejudicial opinions, presented. It is the right to test by cross-examination the veracity of every witness and the value of his testimony. It is, perhaps above all, the right to counsel of one’s own choice, so that all the other rights may be protected. In this defense, Oswald has forfeited all rights along with his life.~Mark Lane – December 19, 1963

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Why Jean Davison Won’t Quit: A Look Back at Oswald’s Game
Reviewed by James DiEugenio

“I’d like to once again say ‘thank you’ to Jean for an exemplary book, which offers up just about as good a biography on President Kennedy’s assassin as you’re likely to find.”~David Von Pein

Jean Davison published her book Oswald’s Game back in 1983. To date, it remains the only book she has ever written on the Kennedy assassination. Further, one will Google long and hard to find any articles or essays she has published on the JFK case.

Which is not to say that she is not an active participant in the Kennedy murder debate. She is. She has been a frequent poster at many forums since at least the early nineties. And she continues to do so to this day. As the reader can see from the above quote, Warren Commission zealot David Von Pein is a firm believer in the efficacy of her book. Von Pein, of course, was also a staunch advocate for Reclaiming History. His critical acumen and honesty were found lacking in that instance. As we shall see, his critical faculties are also found in abeyance in the case of Oswald’s Game. This retrospective review is meant to elucidate what Davison does today, but also to show how bereft of critical analysis the Krazy Kid Oswald Camp is.

Before I begin I wish to add a word to the lexicon. It will be the second addition from the JFK debates, after the word “Fetzering.” Fetzering; owing to former philosophy professor Jim Fetzer; usually means disagreeing by using rancor, name-calling and just plain arrogance i.e. “I think you’re wrong therefore you are.”

In rereading Oswald’s Game for the first time in over 20 years, I was struck by the author’s recurring pattern of making sweeping, but specious, generalizations with the utmost confidence and authority. Therefore I will use the term “davisonism” throughout this review to denote these occurrences of Davisonism: presumed certainty which, upon analysis, are almost always exposed as pretentious gas passing.

In her Introduction, Davison begins in an odd, but emblematic way. She only deals very briefly there with the assassination and the appointment of the Warren Commission. After four pages, she centers on her encounter with Mark Lane’s book Rush to Judgment. Why would she do that? Because one, of her subthemes throughout the work is to minimize and marginalize the efforts of the Warren Commission critics. As we will see, she does this through a variety of propaganda techniques. At the outset, she goes after Lane and his depiction of the testimony of Jack Ruby. Specifically, she says that Lane shortened the context of Ruby’s testimony to try and show that he was asking to leave Dallas so he could tell his whole story in Washington.

Her reply to Lane is that this is not really accurate. She says that what Lane “didn’t say however, was that the ‘tests’ Ruby wanted to take were simply a lie detector test; and the reason Ruby wanted to take one was to prove that he was not part of a conspiracy.” (Davison, p. 18, italics in original) She then continues with this: “The following month Ruby was allowed to take a polygraph test in his jail cell, and he showed no signs of deception when he denied being part of a conspiracy.” (ibid, p. 19) Thus, the kibosh is placed on Lane as representative of all critics. The message is: You can’t trust them. The subtext is: Trust me, Jean Davison. I will give you the full picture.

Thus we have the first davisonism. Since her book was written years after the House Select Committee on Assassinations published its volumes, it may be even worse than that. Because in those HSCA volumes is a report by a panel of experts on the polygraph exam given to Ruby by FBI agent Bell Herndon. That report is highly critical of Herndon and therefore impacts negatively on the credibility of Oswald’s Game. The panel concluded that Herndon’s test violated at least ten accepted practices of good polygraph technique. (James DiEugenio, Reclaiming Parkland, p. 244) These ranged from having way too many people in the room; which could lead to distractions and false readings; to actually misusing important equipment.

Another key violation by Herndon was the sheer number of questions given to Ruby. Which was over a hundred. The panel blistered the FBI agent on this point. They wrote that the number of questions “showed total disregard of basic polygraph principles.” (ibid) The problem was simple: “…the more a person is tested, the less he tends to react when lying. That is…liars become test-tired, they no longer produce significant physiological reactions when lying.” (ibid) In other words, because of the length of the test, Ruby could get away with lying without being detected. Under these circumstances, the panel said a second test should have been given as a crosscheck to the faulty technique of the first one. After all, the entire proceeding lasted over five hours. (ibid, p. 245)

The panel also said they had a real problem with how Herndon categorized the three types of questions polygraph technicians use. These are: relevant questions, control questions, and irrelevant questions. A control question is one that the operator offers up knowing the probability is high that the subject will lie about it. He does this in order to get a reading on what a lie will look like on his chart for this particular subject. Irrelevant questions are just that; questions which are not germane to the case but will give a good reading for answering honestly. The third category, relevant questions, are those asked that are germane to the case, and about which the authorities wish to know if the subject is lying about. The panel concluded that Herndon mixed up the categories for the questions. Therefore it was hard to decipher the landmarks in his chart as to what constituted deceptive criteria. (ibid, p. 245)

As I wrote about Herndon in Reclaiming Parkland:

There was a method to the madness. First, by wearing Ruby down the charted physiological responses would be less detectable. Second, by confusing the three types of questions, there would be no accurate landmarks with which to make an accurate chart.

But this was not enough for Herndon. The panel concluded that he set the Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) machine to only a quarter of its maximum reading at the beginning. This machine is sensitive to internal stimuli indicating deceptive criteria. He then actually lowered the setting. (ibid) This was the opposite of accepted practice. The setting should have never been that low at all. But it should have been raised as the test went on because of its overlong length. Because of this, the panel concluded that the GSR reading was completely useless.

All of this is quite relevant to the davisonism that Ruby showed no sign of deception when asked if he was part of a conspiracy. For instance, the panel noted that Ruby’s negative reaction to the question, “Did you assist Oswald in the assassination?” recorded the largest GSR reaction in the first test series. In other words, when Ruby was relatively fresh and the GSR was set at its highest point. To accompany that indication, there was also a suppression of breathing and a rise in blood pressure at the time. (ibid, p. 246)

Now, when one looks at the footnotes to Oswald’s Game, one will see that there are references to the HSCA volumes. But when she refers to the Ruby polygraph, she only uses the Warren Commission. (See page 304, footnotes 18 and 19) In other words, at the outset of her book, to the unsuspecting reader, it appears that 1.) Ruby was an honest person 2.) He was not a part of any plot, and 3.) The Commission was a reliable fact finding body. When, in fact, the HSCA report cited above indicates the opposite was the case for all three.

But actually, it’s worse than that. Every Warren Commission zealot, which Davison is, needs to camouflage a central part of the cover up. Namely, that the investigative agencies of the Warren Commission gave that body unreliable and incomplete information. Because, obviously, if that is so, then the Commission’s fact finding procedure can be proven to be both flawed and incomplete. Knowing what we do today about J. Edgar Hoover; through, for example, the works of Curt Gentry and Athan Theoharis; the Bureau has lost much of its reputation for honesty and objectivity. In fact, today, Hoover’s career; from the Palmer Raids to his harassment of Martin Luther King; is looked upon as a necessary aberration. It was necessary because the man was a blackmailing adder who exercised almost total control over his agency. Why is that an important point to make? Because it is not credible to assume that Herndon would have done what he did unless it was sanctioned from above. By not telling the reader about this report, or about Hoover’s character, Davison can hide that crucial point from her readers.

Which brings us to two more davisonisms. First, by beginning with this strophe, namely that the Commission was credible and its critics were not, Davison stands the revealed factual record on its head. With what we know today, in fact back in 1983 when Oswald’s Game was published, the Warren Report was a massively flawed proceeding from its inception. Actually, from before its inception. And one of its most grievous errors was relying on men like Hoover at the FBI, Richard Helms and James Angleton at CIA, and James Rowley and Elmer Moore of the Secret Service. The result was that the Commission did things like tailoring testimony, eliminating important information, and altering evidence. (Click here as to how and why)

The second davisonism that extends from this opening is her depiction of Jack Ruby. It can only be termed a whitewash. Recall, this book was written after the HSCA volumes were released and after Seth Kantor’s biography of Ruby was published. (In fact, Kantor’s book Who was Jack Ruby? is actually in Davison’s bibliography.)

Near the end of her book, she picks up Ruby again at DA Henry Wade’s infamous Friday night press conference, after Oswald had been apprehended. She admits that Ruby was in the room. (Davison, p. 246) But she leaves out two important pieces of information. First, that he camouflaged himself as a journalist. Second, that he corrected Wade as to the one-man operation Oswald was involved with in New Orleans. Wade said it was the Free Cuba Committee, and Ruby corrected him as to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. (Kantor, 1992 edition, pgs. 101-02)

Here, Davison also adds something that is just inexplicable. In a whopper of a davisonism, she writes that Ruby was “a police buff who knew several dozen members of the local force.” This could be lifted straight from the Warren Report. (See p. 24, where they say Ruby knew maybe 50 cops) It is one reason the report has fallen into disrepute. For as Sylvia Meagher pointed out in her classic Accessories After the Fact, the Warren Report tried to “remodel Ruby” into an “antiseptic portrait.” (Meagher, p. 391) Because in the 26 volumes there was evidence that Ruby had “ties with the underworld, gamblers and hoods, [and] narcotics traffic.” (ibid) But further, Meagher asks, why was Ruby allowed to wander freely through the Dallas Police station throughout the entire assassination weekend? Once, he even got an officer’s help in paging a TV station employee. (ibid, pgs. 422, 423) Meagher also shows that Ruby had been protected in the past from being charged by the police for felonies.

The truth is that Ruby knew over half of the 75 or more cops who were in the basement when he shot Oswald. (ibid, p. 423) If we apply that ratio to the entire department, Ruby probably knew over 500 members of the force. In fact, that figure is probably too low. Ruby’s friend, Reagan Turman, told the FBI that Ruby “was acquainted with at least 75%, and probably 80% of the police officers on the Dallas Police Department.” (Commission Exhibit 1467) And as many others have written, one probable reason for this is that Ruby was a front man for organized crime when it moved into Dallas. (Meagher, pgs. 423-24) In fact, an FBI informant said that for Ruby to carry on as a courier for mob gambling, which he did, the man had to have police connections in both Dallas and Fort Worth. (FBI report of 12/6/63) This informant, William Abadie, had briefly worked for Ruby writing up gambling “tickets” as well as serving as a “slot machine and jukebox mechanic.” He went on to say he had observed policemen coming and going while acting as a bookie in Ruby’s apartment.

This could go on and on. (Click here for more on Ruby) But the point is that Davison, as with Ruby’s polygraph, is not candid with the reader about Ruby’s background and the extent of his police connections. Needless to say, she also eliminates the credible reports of Ruby being at Parkland Hospital. Which Ruby unconvincingly denied. (Meagher, pgs. 394-95)

But alas, Ruby is not the main focus of Oswald’s Game. That status belongs to Oswald. As we will now see, Davison is as biased and incomplete about him as she is about Ruby.

III

If one were going to write a biography of Oswald in 1983, one would want to make it as complete and thorough as possible. Or else, why write such a book? To make your effort as complete as you could would mean collecting as much information as possible from as many places as possible. This would mean, at a minimum, making trips to Washington, New Orleans, Dallas/Fort Worth and New York City. Washington is where the declassified record is located. Oswald had lived in the other three cities. One would also want to check up on Oswald’s military records, and interview as many former service colleagues as one could locate. And this would just be the beginning. Since, in any field investigation, leads pile up once an interview is done.

The shocking thing about Oswald’s Game is this: There is no evidence that Davison did any of the above! For instance, in her footnotes there is not one reference to either an original phone interview she did, or to an on the scene, in person interview. Which is incredible. But further, I could find no reference to any newly declassified documents she secured. The overwhelming majority of her footnotes come from four sources: the Warren Report, the Commission’s accompanying 26 volumes, Edward Epstein’s book Legend, and Priscilla Johnson’s book, Marina and Lee.

In and of itself, that tells us much about both who Davison was and is, and her book. Because, as many commentators have noted, the summary of Oswald’s life presented by the Warren Report had some serious lacunae in it. And the objectivity of Epstein and Johnson is, to put it mildly, circumspect. To be candid, they have both been credibly accused of being close to the CIA. (For Johnson, click here) In fact, Legend was written with consultation from James Angleton, who many believe today to have been Oswald’s control officer. (Click here for info on Epstein) Throughout Oswald’s Game, Davison does not say one word about any of this controversy. Why?

It’s probably the same reason she begins her book as she does. After the introduction, she spends a short chapter on Oswald’s defection. She then begins the book proper with Chapter 2. It’s titled “Marguerite’s Son.”. The chapter is an echo of Jean Stafford’s book, A Mother in History. Which most of us realize today was a laborious and demeaning exercise in which a gifted novelist was made to do a hatchet job courtesy of FBI informant Hugh Aynesworth. We must also not forget what Arlen Specter said to Jean Hill. When she resisted changing her story about hearing too many shots, Specter said words to the effect, we can do to you what we did to Marguerite Oswald. Stafford’s book; really an expanded magazine article; was an out and out hatchet job. On the cover, it showed Marguerite standing over Oswald’s grave, with the subtitle, “The Mother of the Man who killed Kennedy.”

What was Marguerite’s vice, which condemned her to brutal caricature at the hands of the Commission and Stafford/Aynesworth? They had two problems with her. She thought her son may have been innocent, and she also thought he was probably an intelligence agent. In retrospect, those two beliefs should have brought her praise for her honesty, insight, and courage. But since the politics of the JFK case are so pervasive, Marguerite had to be macheted in public. Which, no surprise, Davison has no problem with.

But there is unintentional humor to be had here. Davison is so agenda driven, so monomaniacal in her condemnation of Oswald and his mother, so obsessed with showing some kind of early personality defect Lee inherited from his mom, that she spills over into unconscious self-parody. When Oswald went to Russia, one of the things he told one of the reporters in his room at the Metropole Hotel was that he first got interested in communism when a woman handed him a pamphlet meant to save the Rosenbergs. (Destiny Betrayed, Second Edition, by Jim DiEugenio, p. 145; Davison, p. 54) Davison uses this incident throughout the book to somehow indicate that a large and latent psychic chasm was unleashed in Oswald by reading this pamphlet. For her, this is a huge milestone in Oswald’s mental evolution, one that started him down the road to murder.

Which, upon analysis, is funny. See, the Metropole was used for many state services in Moscow. As John Newman has shown, it was furnished with infrared cameras, for spying on its residents. Therefore, it’s natural to suspect it was also wired for sound. (DiEugenio, ibid) When Oswald surfaced this story about the Rosenberg pamphlet, he was trying to convince the Russian authorities to let him stay in Moscow. Clearly, by letting him hole up at the Metropole, the Russians were deciding on whether Oswald was a genuine defector, or on an espionage mission. Oswald issued many B movie platitudes trying to convince the KGB he was genuine. In one of his interviews with American journalists, he said at age 15 he became seriously interested in communism when “an old lady handed me a pamphlet about saving the Rosenbergs.” (ibid)

It was probably this statement that convinced the KGB Oswald was on a spy mission. For they then kicked him out of Moscow and sent him 450 miles away to Minsk. They set up a ring of human intel around him, and also wired his state furnished apartment for sound. (Ibid) Why? Because Oswald did not have his story straight. Oswald has to be referring here to his sojourn in the liberal New York City. Since it’s hard to believe there were Rosenberg committees in New Orleans or Dallas. But when Oswald turned 15 in 1954 he was living in New Orleans, not New York. Further, why would anyone be distributing “Save the Rosenberg” literature at that time? The couple had been executed in June of the previous year. The KGB officers watching and listening to the surveillance tapes must have been both smiling and frowning at Oswald’s performance. But Davison is so intent on indicting Oswald she presents this dead on serious. She then follows it with this davisonism:

Whether through force of example or inherited disposition, Lee Oswald had acquired an egocentricity resembling his mother Marguerite. What made the Rosenberg pamphlet memorable to him, surely was that he saw himself in it…Here he held in his hand a message that said to him: Here are allies you can identify with… (Davison, p. 56)

To the professional KGB of course, the reaction was quite different: they saw through the little playlet. But really, Davison’s five and dime story psychoanalysis based on faulty assumptions is so strained, so heavy handed, that it reminded me of Woody Allen’s hilarious mockumentary Take the Money and Run. With very few alterations, this part of Oswald’s Game could serve as a scenario for that type of film.

IV

The above points out another grave failing of Oswald’s Game. The writer’s repeated tendency to leave out important information that the reader needs in order to render an accurate judgment. As noted above, Davison is hell-bent on keeping Oswald out of the hands of the CIA. Therefore, she simply eliminates or greatly discounts key information that could lead the reader to consider that hypothesis, since it fits into a complete portrait of the man.

Consider Oswald’s acquisition of the Russian language. She says he learned it in the service on his own. I could find no reference to the executive session report of the Warren Commission in which they say Oswald was at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. (Executive Session transcript of 1/27/64) That transcript was declassified through the efforts of Harold Weisberg in 1974. Ten years before Oswald’s Game was published. Some readers may think that is important information. For the simple matter that Russian is a very difficult language to learn. And it’s not credible that someone could acquire it on his own through listening to records or reading periodicals. (Davison, pgs. 73 and 76) Coinciding with this failure is the missing name of Rosaleen Quinn. In the service, a colleague of Oswald’s set up a meeting between Lee and his aunt, Ms. Quinn. Quinn had been studying for a State Department job. She had therefore been tutored in Russian for over a year. After Quinn came away from the meeting with Oswald, she said he spoke Russian at least as well as she did. Any language expert will tell you that you simply cannot become fluent in something like Russian by listening to the radio or records. You must be privately tutored or take part in classes. (DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, p. 131) If one combines the instruction in Russian with the defection, with the phony platitudes uttered by Oswald at the Metropole, and the KGB cynicism about him, then one could at least suspect that maybe Oswald was being prepared by the Navy to go to Russia as a false defector. But you cannot do this if you cut out Quinn, the Defense Language Institute, the difficulty in learning Russian, and the KGB suspicion and surveillance at the Metropole.

Davison also does not explain why the KGB would be suspicious of Oswald in the first place. In other words, she does not place Oswald’s defection into its proper backdrop. Oswald left the USA for Russia in the fall of 1959. Prior to 1958, American defectors to Russia had been a rather rare occurrence. In 1958, there had been four. In 1959, prior to Oswald, there had already been two of them, Robert Webster and Nicholas Petrulli. It is stunning, but it’s true: You will not see either of those names in the index to Oswald’s Game. By the end of 1960, the number of defections had ballooned to the high teens. (Ibid, Destiny Betrayed, p. 139) The KGB noted the trend. Just as they noted that many of these defectors were from the military. Which is unusual in itself. Robert Webster had worked for Rand Corporation, which had ties to the CIA. And Rand was one of the first companies to sell products inside of Russia. It was at a trade fair that Webster had defected.

But yet, once one understands what Davison is up to in this book, one comprehends why all this is left out. For instance, although Oswald was not supposed to have known about the Webster case, before he left the USSR to return to the USA, he asked American embassy officials “about the fate of a young man named Webster who came to Russia at about the time he did.” (ibid) And by not dealing with Webster, Davison avoids something that she almost has to avoid. Webster met the 19-year-old Marina Prusakova in Moscow in 1959, before she met her future husband Lee Oswald. And Webster spoke to her in English! Which is a language Marina was not supposed to have acquired yet. After the assassination, the address of Webster’s Leningrad apartment was found in Marina’s address book. (ibid, p. 140) When any curious, interested reader is confronted with this kind of information, he or she would naturally ask: 1.) What are the odds of a 19-year-old girl meeting two of three defectors in 1959 in the huge expanse of Russia? 2.) Why would Marina have learned English and why would she later lie about it? Clearly, Davison does not want the reader to contemplate those questions. Which is why she does not tell you about Marina�s uncle, who was a high official in the Russian equivalent of the FBI. Or that Marina once confused her meeting with Webster with her meeting of Oswald. (ibid, p. 140) All of this suggests the probability of an American “false defector” program being set in place. It also suggests the KGB was on to it. And with Marina, may have been designing countermeasures for it.

The proof of this is the Otto Otepka case. Otepka was an investigator in the State Department. In late 1960 he noticed this quite discernible uptick in suspicious defections from the USA to Russia. So he sent a cable to Dick Bissell at CIA. He wanted to know which of the defectors were real and which were not. Bissell turned this request over to James Angleton and his Counter Intelligence staff. This is interesting because, as author John Newman found out, many of Oswald’s CIA documents at this time bear the label CI/OPS, which means Counter Intelligence Operations. The eighth name on Otepka’s list was Lee Oswald. When the CIA assigned the list to a researcher, he was told to work on some but not others. One of the “others” was Oswald. When CIA sent backs its reply to State, the name Oswald was marked SECRET. But Otepka was persistent. He wanted to know the truth about both Oswald and the program. For that he was harassed, persecuted and eventually thrown out of his office. (DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, p. 164) A State Department intelligence analyst suspects Oswald is a false defector. He cannot get an answer to this from the CIA. He persists and eventually loses his job. Once he is out, his safe is drilled into to find what he knew about Oswald. This was on November 5, 1963. Somehow, that information about her subject did not seem important to Jean Davison.

But if that is a puzzler, the following is a complete baffler. As noted, Oswald did not defect until the fall of 1959. Otepka made his request to CIA in late 1960. It was only after this request that the CIA opened up a 201 file on Oswald, over a year after the defection. This delay was so weird to the HSCA that it inquired about it to more than one CIA official. For the 201 file is a common file at the Agency. It is an information file on any person of interest to them. Oswald had to be such since he had shown up at the American Embassy in Moscow and hinted he could give secrets of the U-2 to the Russians. (Ibid, p. 143) But neither Ann Egerter, Angleton’s assistant, nor Richard Helms, former Director of the CIA, could explain why it was not opened promptly.

Now, the combination of the Otepka persecution, with this inexplicable 201-file delay could lead one to conclude that the 201 file was not opened because Oswald was a false defector for Angleton. But again, the reader cannot even ponder this since it’s not in this book. The information about the 201 was unearthed by the HSCA. The HSCA shut down four years before Oswald’s Game was published. A good summary of the Otepka affair is in Jim Hougan’s book Spooks, which was published in 1978. The Ordeal of Otto Otepka, a book length treatment of the matter, was published a decade before that, in 1969. Therefore, as the reader can see, there was really no excuse for this fascinating and important data not to be included in Oswald’s Game. The only apparent excuse is that it did not fit in with the writer’s agenda. Considering how large and consuming that agenda was, the book’s more apt title would have been Davison’s Game.

V

As noted above, it’s pretty clear that Davison did not do any traveling to anywhere in America to investigate Oswald’s life. In fact, it’s not certain that she even made any phone calls. So it obvious that she did not try and replicate Oswald’s journey overseas for his defection to the USSR. If she had, she may have discovered at least a couple of interesting things that would have prevented her book from being a museum piece upon publication.

Oswald was never known to have any solid finances. So when his service pal Nelson Delgado was asked, he replied that he had no idea how Oswald could afford to travel across Europe. Delgado said this cost anywhere from eight hundred to a thousand dollars. (Destiny Betrayed, p. 137) Which a study of his bank records reveals he did not have. But in addition to this, Davison could have told us about the hotels he stayed in while in Helsinki. British investigator Ian Griggs actually stayed in them. The first was the Hotel Torni. Griggs described this as no less than a five star hotel. The rough equivalent of the Savoy in London or the Four Seasons in San Francisco. How and why would someone as low status as Oswald choose to stay at such a place? Someone must have alerted him to this dilemma because he soon checked out. He went to the Klaus Kurki Hotel. Griggs described this as maybe a notch below the Torni. A four and a half star hotel. Since, as I said, Davison never went anywhere for a field investigation, she cannot inform us of this dichotomy. And therefore, the reader cannot ask the obvious questions: Where did Oswald get the money to stay in the kinds of hotels that Nelson Rockefeller and Jean Sibelius booked? (ibid, p. 138) And second, why would the usually frugal Oswald become a spendthrift in Finland?

But beyond that, outside the pages of Oswald’s Game, with normal rationality, the question also arises: Why did Oswald even go to Helsinki? Davison says that he placed an educational facility destination adjacent to Helsinki on his passport application. Which does not really explain it, since Oswald wrote several places on the application. Some of which he never went to. It appears he went there because that particular Russian Embassy had close ties to Intourist, the Russian state-owned travel bureau. Oswald applied for a visa to Intourist on October 13th. He got it the next day. (ibid, p. 138) Again, this is notable for the saga of Oswald. Because the Helsinki embassy was the only one in Europe which granted these visas that fast. The US Embassy there had direct ties to their Soviet counterparts and sent people who needed expedited visas to them. Did Oswald know this? Is this why he went there? If so, who told him about it? Since Davison deals with the matter of Helsinki in about two sentences, those questions also do not arise in Oswald’s Game. (See Davison, pgs. 81, 84)

This brings us to the matter of how Oswald began his journey to Helsinki. Once he was fluent in Russian, as proven through his conversation with Quinn, Oswald did something unusual. He applied for a hardship discharge. Again, Delgado could not understand it. For these were notoriously hard to get and took a long time to process. (Second Edition, Destiny Betrayed, p. 136)

Now, let us make the mystery about this transparent, which Davison really does not do. Oswald’s actual application was submitted on August 17th. At this point, his service contract had less than four months to run. The HSCA discovered that these proceedings took as many as six months to finalize. (ibid) Therefore, under normal circumstances, Oswald would have been better off just waiting out his service contract rather than gambling with the complex process of discharge. Why do I say that? Because, usually there were thorough investigations made at both ends to make sure the application was not a bogus attempt to get out early. And if there had been normal inquiries done, Oswald’s filing would have been exposed as ersatz and he would have been busted.

But he wasn’t. One reason he was not was this: instead of taking six months, or even three, his application was approved in just ten days! The way Davison deals with this is rich. She says that Oswald’s application “was approved fairly quickly.” (Davison, p. 82) Well, that’s one way of putting it. But by not telling us about the actual time lapse, she avoids the question of what kind of inquiry could the Navy have made in just ten days. Because the main reason the application was granted was the excuse that Marguerite had a candy box at work fall on her nose. She needed to get a doctor’s affidavit to collect on workmen’s compensation since the company she worked for did not think the injury was that serious.

One of the doctors that Marguerite visited to collect information for her workman’s compensation claim was Dr. Milton Goldberg. He called the FBI on the day of the assassination and said he could not go along with her claims for injuries and referred her to other doctors. But he also told the FBI that on one of her early visits she told him her son wanted to defect to Russia. (DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, p. 136) Now, her first visit to Goldberg was on January 9, 1959. Which was a full nine months before Oswald was discharged. It was six months before he reported to the Red Cross to begin the process of the dependency discharge. Of which there was no dependency. The Navy could have discovered this just by interviewing Robert Oswald, who was living in Fort Worth at the time. There is no evidence that he was helping his mother at the time. And, of course, when Oswald did get out, he spent all of three days in Texas. Clearly, something was going on behind the scenes with this hardship discharge. But you would never get any suggestion of impropriety from Oswald’s Game.

VI

One of the most bizarre things about this bizarre book is that Davison cannot bring herself to admit the obvious paradox about Oswald. Here you have a supposed Marxist who decides to join the Marines. On his return from Russia he chooses to live with first, the rightwing White Russians in Dallas/Fort Worth. These people wanted to overthrow the communists and restore the czar. In New Orleans, he had various associations with the Cuban exiles. These men wanted to overthrow Castro and make Cuba an ally of the USA again. If Oswald was a communist, he was one of the weirdest communists ever. But further, like every other inquiry into his life, Davison fails to produce one communist friend that Oswald worked with or shared time with on the ground in the USA. Does this not make his associations with the White Russians and Cuban exiles even stranger?

If you can believe it, in the 300 pages of her book she never admits to this fact. Probably because it so plainly flies in the face of her thesis about Oswald being a communist. And, in fact, Richard Snyder who worked out of the American Embassy in Moscow, and interviewed Oswald, worked for the CIA on Operation Redskin. This was a program designed to recruit Ivy League Russian speaking graduates to travel behind the Iron Curtain. (DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, p. 141) Three days before Oswald showed up in his office to try and renounce his citizenship, Snyder wrote a letter to a fellow State Department employee on his experience with American “defectors.” There are quotes around that word because Snyder did the same. And he was referring to the Webster case. (ibid)

How did Oswald begin this strange masquerade as a communist Marine, false defector, FBI informant, and CIA agent provocateur? Well in any serious study of his life, which Oswald’s Game is not, the figure of David Ferrie and Oswald’s teenage years in the Civil Air Patrol under his supervision must loom large. To use one example, John Armstrong spends four oversized pages on this episode in his biography called Harvey and Lee. (See pages 122-25) Again, the way Davison handles this key episode is so rich as to be humorous. Referring to June of 1955, she writes, “That summer he joined the Civil Air Patrol and attended several meetings at which one of the leaders was an eccentric pilot named David Ferrie. Ferrie would become a central figure in many conspiracy theories.” (Davison, pgs. 62-63) I kid you not, that is it.

But even she cannot keep the lid on how important this episode is. Because, right after this, she writes that it was this time period when Oswald began to exhibit an interest in Marxism. Now, a true biographer who really wanted to be honest with the record and his reader would have to equate the two. For anyone who studies Ferrie quickly understands he was not just your usual CAP instructor. He had an inordinate interest in the lives of his cadets. And if Davison had gone to New Orleans and interviewed some of these subjects she could have written about this. But, in fact, she did not even really have to do that. Because Jim Garrison had donated many of his files to Bud Fensterwald’s AARC (which was under a different name at the time.) So all she had to do was drive down to Washington to look at these interview transcripts and affidavits. If she was too lazy for even that, then she could have interviewed the two New Orleans investigators for the HSCA, Bob Buras and Lawrence Delsa. They would have told her that Ferrie had a tremendous influence over these youths. And he also seemed to have clearance from above to do things with them that required special permission. Like camping out with them at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, and having military planes fly them back form drill competitions. He also convinced a number of them to join the Marines. (Author’s interview with Delsa in New Orleans in 1994; Destiny Betrayed, p. 84) I could go on and on in this regard, but suffice it to say, many writers have deduced that David Ferrie was a powerful influence on Oswald’s life. If he was not, then why was Ferrie so obsessed with hiding his relationship with Oswald in the CAP in the days following the assassination? (Destiny Betrayed, pgs 176-77)

Sticking with New Orleans and Garrison, she spends about a page in a bare bones, less than cursory discussion of the Clinton/Jackson incident. She concludes this with a shattering davisonism. She says that if the event occurred it was certainly Guy Banister, not Clay Shaw who was the driver of the car. She then says that since the witnesses there were confused about Banister and Shaw they may have been mistaken about Oswald as well. She also adds, and they did not come forward until 1967. (Davison, pgs. 284-85)

Where does one begin to dissect this drivel? Again, it exposes Davison as the totally amateur researcher she is. For if she would have collected the primary resources on this incident; something she has a phobia against; she would not have written such foolishness. The witness statements make it clear that it was not Banister with Ferrie and Oswald, it was Clay Shaw. For instance, Henry Burnell Clark said the driver of the car was unusually tall, well over six feet. Banister was about 5′ 9,” Shaw was 6′ 4.” (William Davy, Let Justice Be Done, p. 105) If that is not enough, Sheriff John Manchester said he approached the car and asked the driver to identify himself. When asked what name he gave, Manchester said under oath, “He gave Clay Shaw, which corresponded with his driver’s license.” (ibid, p. 106) The witnesses were not confused at all. In her usual lazy way, Davison decided to accept reporters’ spin instead of using the primary sources. And if she had gotten out of her living room, she would have discovered that the witnesses did not come forward in 1967. They all talked about the event in the wake of the assassination. Reeves Morgan called the FBI. And local rightwing publisher Ned Touchstone interviewed them in 1965, and wrote about it in his publication called The Councilor. (Joan Mellen, A Farewell to Justice, pgs. 214-15, p. 234)

VII

Let us now proceed to the payoff of the book. The reason I think Davison actually wrote the thing. That is, her discussions of the Odio incident and Mexico City. Davison wants us to buy into something pretty unpalatable. She wants us to think that Oswald was both at Sylvia Odio’s apartment door and in Mexico City. That is, there was no mistaken identity and no imposters involved. She does this by employing the same trick that Vincent Bugliosi does. Before the Commission, Sylvia twice said that three men; two Cubans and Leon Oswald; visited her during the last week of September. It was on a Thursday or a Friday. (WC Volume XI, pgs. 370, 386) This means the date could be either the 26th or 27th. Even if we accept the earlier date, this contradicts the Warren Report. For they state that on that date, Oswald was on a bus headed from the Mexican border town of Nuevo Laredo to Mexico City. (WR, p. 733)

So, to avoid this serious problem; which clearly suggests the use of an imposter in one or the other place; Davison did in 1983 what Vincent Bugliosi did almost 25 years later. She moved the date back to the 25th. Even with that, there is a problem. The incident took place at around 9 PM in Dallas. The Warren Report has Oswald in Houston that night calling the socialist editor of a magazine. But the call came at nine or a bit later. There is no indication the call was long distance. The drive from Dallas to Houston is about four hours. (DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, p. 352)

All of this is discounted by Davison. She says that it’s Oswald at Odio’s. But she says that it was really Oswald manipulating the Cubans there. She says “if the real Oswald was used, how did the anti-Castro plotters get their Marxist enemy to stand at Odio’s door to be introduced as a friend of the Cuban exiles.” (Davison, p. 194) Well Jean, the same way Oswald was in Guy Banister’s office and in Clinton/Jackson with Shaw and Ferrie. Because anyone who knows this case and has any objectivity realizes that Oswald was not a Marxist. Davison makes great pains to compare this incident with what she calls Oswald’s attempt to infiltrate Carlos Bringuier’s Cuban exile group, the DRE in New Orleans. But if Bringuier and his assistant Carlos Quiroga were supplying Oswald with the flyers for this Trade Mart leafleting incident, then this “infiltration” idea of hers collapses. And that is what a neutral witness, Oswald’s landlady Jesse Garner, seems to indicate. (DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, p. 162) This silly comparison of hers is further undermined by Quiroga’s polygraph test for Jim Garrison. Quiroga was asked: “You have said you tried to infiltrate Oswald’s ‘organization.’ Isn’t it a fact that you knew his Fair Play for Cuba activities were merely a cover?” Quiroga replied in the negative. That reply indicated he was lying. So did his negative reply to the following: “Is it not a fact that at that time Oswald was in reality a part of an anti-Castro operation?” (Ibid) Again, Davison’s attempt at being a researcher is a bit embarrassing.

But she carries on her concept further. She now says that Oswald was actually manipulating the Cubans he was with. Again, this is silly. On two counts. First, why would Oswald put himself forth as a possible assassin of Kennedy in advance of the murder? If you believe Davison, that is what happened here. But secondly, if Oswald was doing the manipulating, then why was it the Cubans who called Sylvia back to make the incident more indelible?

Finally, like many Commission advocates, Davison leaves out the fact that Odio belonged to JURE. This was a liberal anti-Castro group that was a favorite of Kennedy. And it was hated by Howard Hunt because he called its leadership by Manuelo Ray, “Castroism without Fidel.” In other words, the under text here is that the Cubans were trying to ingratiate Oswald with a leftist exile group in advance of the assassination. This is made manifest by the fact that the two Cubans masqueraded as JURE members but were not.

Let us conclude with what Davison now says is her proof that Oswald planned on killing Kennedy. She uses the hoary, mildewed Daniel Harker story. This was a newspaper account of an interview with Fidel Castro in which he was reported as saying that if “US leaders should think that if they are aiding terrorism plans to eliminate Cuban leaders, they themselves will not be safe.” (Davison, p. 22) The problems with this story are manifold. First, as she notes, there is not any evidence that Oswald saw the story. Second, with the evidence we have now, it’s clear that Kennedy was trying for detente with Castro at this time. The attacks on Cuba had dwindled away to almost nothing. And the declassified Inspector General report makes it clear that Kennedy never authorized any of the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro. Third, as she acknowledges, the evidence says that Oswald liked Kennedy. Fourth, if Oswald killed Kennedy for the Castro cause, why did he deny it afterwards?

Davison couples this with something even weaker. It’s the report from an FBI informant in the communist party that Oswald walked into the Cuban consulate and said he was going to kill Castro. These have come to be called the SOLO documents. And this part of them, the Castro threat is almost surely a forgery. As John Newman told this reviewer, this is allegedly a part of a letter from the informant to Gus Hall, leader of the communist party. Newman said, this kind of information would not be part of that letter to Hall. SOLO was too experienced to do that. (Author interview with Newman, 11/29/13) Second, why would Oswald, on the occasion of having problems with his visa blurt out in the consulate that he was going to kill Kennedy. When, in fact, it was his own fault he was having problems. He was not prepared with the proper documentation. Third, if Oswald said this, then why did not the incoming or outgoing chief counsel there hear him? And for that matter, neither did Sylvia Duran. Fourth, Oswald needed clearance for his in-transit visa from both Cuba and Russia. Why would he say something like this knowing that if the Russians call for a check, someone will tell them, “He said he was going to kill Kennedy.” Fifth, Castro did not mention this threat in either his nationally televised radio/TV appearance of November 23rd of during his speech at the University of Havana on November 27th. And since no one at the embassy heard Oswald say this, then Castro would have had to manufacture the quote. Why would he do such a thing? (ibid, Newman interview.)

Newman says that he does not think the informant manufactured the quote either. He thinks someone in the FBI did and pasted it into the letter. Quite naturally, every one of these cogent points is absent from Oswald’s Game. I mean, Davison’s Game.

Needless to say, Davison does not list the plentiful evidence that Oswald was not in Mexico City. Namely, the voice on the tapes sent to Dallas, was not his. The CIA has never been able to produce one picture of Oswald entering either embassy in over 50 years. Even though a total of five cameras covered both embassies. Four of the five embassy workers who encountered this man called Oswald, said he was short and blonde. In 1978, when consul Eusebio Azcue was interviewed by CBS news about Mexico City, he produced photos taken by the Cuban surveillance cameras of the man who identified himself as Oswald. The man was short and blonde. (Armstrong, op. cit. p. 646)

I have saved the most thundering davisonism for last. Let us luxuriate in its pure arrogance:

To argue, as some critics have, that Oswald was merely posing as a leftist from the time he was 16 until, literally the day he died, one must unravel the story of his life presented in this book and attempt to reweave it into an entirely new pattern. I can’t say that it is impossible to do so, but thus far it hasn’t been done. (Davison, p. 285)

A statement like that is literally requesting a pie in the face. That pie, a coconut/custard one, was delivered to Davison seven years later. It was by Philip Melanson and it was called Spy Saga. That book revolutionized our thinking about Oswald. And the thing to note is that no great discoveries were made between 1983 and 1990. Therefore, Jean Davison could have theoretically done what Melanson did. But her agenda would not allow it. Today, Spy Saga has been furthered by John Armstrong’s Harvey and Lee and John Newman’s Oswald and the CIA. So today we know much more about Oswald than the Commission would ever tell us. In the light of those works, Jean Davison’s book looks today like a smoking pile of rubbish. Useless to anyone except maybe David Von Pein or John McAdams.

As demonstrated above, Oswald’s Game really tells us more about the biases and obsessions of Jean Davison on the Kennedy case than it does about its ostensible subject. Which is really the worst thing one can say about a biographer.http://www.ctka.net/2014_reviews/Davison%20review.html
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“Whose agent was Oswald-ours or theirs? To hold that he was recruited as a Russian spy, one must posit that virtually all of the agencies of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement were so completely ineffective when it came to Oswald that they must be imagined to be not just incompetent but comatose.”~Melanson

1. CE 399 begins its magical journey at Parkland Hospital. A bullet rolls out from under a mat and lodges against the side of the gurney. (Mark Lane, Rush to Judgment, p. 79) Question: How did it get under the mat? Remember, the Commission will later say this bullet was in John Connally’s body last. No one has ever answered this question.

2. Even Vincent Bugliosi admits that the stretcher it originated from is under question. (Reclaiming History, End Notes, p. 426) But Bugliosi understates the problem here. The weight of the evidence says that the gurney it was found on belonged to neither President Kennedy nor Governor John Connally. (Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After the Fact, pgs. 174-176; Josiah Thompson, Six Seconds in Dallas, pgs. 154-64) It would be a physical impossibility for the bullet to somehow jump from Ron Fuller’s stretcher—where Thompson concludes it was found on- to someone else’s.

3. When hospital attendant Darrell Tomlinson notices it, the bullet has no blood or tissue on it. (Meagher, p. 173) Yet the Commission will say that this bullet went through two men and caused seven wounds.

4. But yet, it’s even worse than that. Why? Because the Commission will eventually say that the last resting place of this bullet was in the thigh of Governor Connally. How could 1.) The bullet reverse trajectory and work its way out? 2.) How could it emerge out of a wound it already made? Most pathologists will tell you that entry wounds slightly shrink afterwards. 3.) Further, how could it have no blood or tissue on it if it traversed backwards?

5. Tomlinson picks up the bullet at about 1:45 PM and takes it to security officer O. P. Wright. (Thompson, p. 156) Wright is very familiar with firearms since he was with the sheriff’s office previously. (ibid, p. 175) Wright gets a good look at the bullet, he notes it as a lead colored, pointed nosed, hunting round. (ibid) This is extremely important since this bullet will change shape and color by the end of its journey..

7. At the White House, Rowley turns a bullet over to FBI agent Elmer Todd. They sign a receipt. The time of the transfer is 8:50 PM on the 22nd. (Hunt, “The Mystery of the 7:30 Bullet”)

8. Yet as John Hunt shows, agent Robert Frazier at the FBI lab enters the stretcher bullet’s arrival into his notes at 7:30! (ibid) As Hunt notes, if Frazier and Todd can both tell time, something is really wrong here. Frazier has received a bullet that Todd has not given him yet.

9. But it’s even worse. For in an FBI document it says that Todd’s initials are on the bullet. (CE 2011, at WC Vol. 24, p. 412) Yet as Hunt has amply demonstrated, they are not there. (Hunt, “Phantom Identification of the Magic Bullet”) In other words, no one who carried this bullet in transit for law enforcement purposes–Johnsen, Rowley, Todd–put their initials on it. When that is what they are trained to do.

10. Later on, J. Edgar Hoover realizes he has a problem. So he writes up a document saying that agent Bardwell Odum visited Parkland, and Wright and Tomlinson did identify the bullet in June of 1964. (Aguilar, p. 282)

11. But later, when visited by Gary Aguilar and Tink Thompson, this is exposed as another in the long line of Hoover generated lies in this case. For Odum did no such thing, and he says he would have recalled doing so since he and Wright were friends. (ibid, p. 284)

12. The night of the assassination, the FBI calls Tomlinson about midnight. They tell him to be quiet about what he found that day. Since what he found that day was a lead colored, sharp nosed hunting round, they must not want him to tell anyone about the bullet. (Jim Marrs, Crossfire, p. 365; David Lifton, Best Evidence, p. 591) A natural question to ask is: Why? A natural answer is: Because they have realized that the original bullet will not match the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle now attributed to Oswald.

13. When Wright composes his affidavit for the WC, incredibly, he leaves out his co-discovery of the bullet and his giving it to the Secret Service. (Lifton, ibid) Even though Johnsen recorded this and its in the volumes. (Thompson, p. 155) Since he was a former law enforcement officer, to leave something like that out, he was probably directed to.

14. When it comes time to write the Warren Report, Wright’s name is not in it. And there is no evidence Arlen Specter interviewed him.

15. In late 1966, we find out why Specter avoided him. Thompson interviews him and he rejects CE 399 as the bullet he gave Johnsen. Twice. (Thompson, p.175) Interestingly, in Reclaiming History, Vincent Bugliosi leaves this powerful incident out of his discussion of the issue. (Bugliosi, End Notes, pgs. 426-27, 544-45)

To say that the chain of evidence rule has been violated in this case is a monumental understatement. Former Chief of Homicide in New York, attorney Bob Tanenbaum once said that it would be embarrassing to present this material to a jury for the prosecution. For me, the most incriminating elements is the evidence that the FBI knew that CE 399 was not the original bullet i.e. the call to Tomlinson, the fake Odum document, possibly the influence over Wright to leave it out of his affidavit, Specter avoiding Wright in the Commission inquiry.http://www.ctka.net/2010/journeyCE399.html
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____________________________________________________________________________________________The sneak-trick is in using that looped sequence as they come from behind the sign – if you watch what happens as the film goes on, Connally turns back around, he is yelling “My god they’re going to kill us all!”, still sitting up and THEN reacts to a shot just before the fatal head shot to Kennedy.
Connally cannot have kept a’hold of his hat, and turned back around still sitting up if he was hit when Jean and David VonP claim.
Watch the full sequence here:
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By James DiEugenio
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert better be looking in their rearview mirrors. They have a rival approaching. And he is even better than Colbert at impersonating the dimwitted, obnoxious, incredibly biased host that has made him famous. Why? Because he’s not acting. His name is David Von Pein and he is now proceeding at warp speed in his attempt to go beyond even Colbert’s famous caricature.

If the reader will recall, the last time we addressed Von Pein he was trying to patch up his beloved Reclaiming History. He has to. For he had ballyhooed Vincent Bugliosi’s giant tome in almost embarrassing accolades. Even before it was published.

To digress, it should be noted that Von Pein also does this with almost any TV show supporting the Commission. Then after the show is broadcast, he issues what is essentially a press release within hours of the air date. He notes that the show was excellently done and that it just wrecked some central tenet of the Commission critics. He has done this with almost every other Discovery Channel debacle to come down the turnpike. Then, when more credible, honest, and serious observers begin to poke holes in the production, he gradually gives ground. Until finally, he will maintain perhaps one tenet of the program as valid. He did this with the horrendous Inside the Target Car. When every point he had accepted about that atrocity was effectively speared, he finally backed off to defending just one of them. This was the simulated shot from the front with the head exploding; which he maintained as showing the head shot could not have come from the grassy knoll. To do this, he ignored a central point made by Milicent Cranor and myself: that what this actually indicated was the “replica skulls” used by host Gary Mack were anything but. Associate producer Mack essentially admitted this in his online discussion of the show when he said that the bullets they used did not fragment. Therefore the “replicas” did not provide the proper resistance, since in the Kennedy case the bullets did fragment. Von Pein can’t admit this since it vitiates both the experiment and his upholding of it. (Click here for our critiques of that phony sideshow )

The above pattern was paralleled with Reclaiming History. Before the book was published, Von Pein said it would lay out and silence the people he despises most in this world i.e. those who find serious fault with the Warren Commission. When the volume was issued, with great alacrity, he issued his usual press release. He praised all aspects of the work. He could find no real fault in the volume’s nearly 2,700 pages. When certain critiques began to point out the clear and myriad problems with the book – which he somehow had overlooked – he began to give ground. Until finally, today, he has been placed almost completely on the defensive.

For example, Von Pein responded to the first part of my Reclaiming History series by questioning my analysis of whether or not Oswald could have ordered the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle that is in evidence today. I spent several paragraphs in part one of my critique showing that in view of all the evidence, it is highly unlikely that he could do so. (Click here for that review.) I also posed a serious question about the transaction: the mail order company sent him the wrong rifle. Both the length and the classification were wrong. Although Oswald ordered the 36-inch model classified as a carbine, the Commission says he received the 40-inch model classified as a short rifle. Further, the House Select Committee on Assassinations discovered that Klein’s only placed scopes on the 36-inch model. Yet the 40-inch model in evidence has a scope on it. (Click here for that discussion.)

Von Pein said he would admit all this, but he then provided a link to the mail order allegedly sent in by Oswald. Which is classic Colbert/Von Pein. Because this technique ignores all the evidence I produced in Part One to show how hard it is to believe that Oswald sent in that money order. To name just a couple of points: 1.) It does not appear the money order was ever deposited, and 2.) Why would Oswald buy the money order at the post office, yet walk over a mile out of his way to mail the envelope? All the while being unaccountably absent from work.”~DiEugenio

“But as with Chaplin’s cannon, the explosion fired the shell about two feet away. For Von Pein’s “mountain of evidence” consisted of the mildewed litany of discredited Warren Commission data. Which, of course, is not a mountain. It’s more like the San Andreas Fault. He began with the above noted specious notion that Oswald owned the rifle; and he ended with the equally specious notion that Oswald could have run down from the sixth floor to the second in time to be seen by Marrion Baker and Roy Truly right after the assassination. Some of the gems in between were that Oswald definitely killed Officer Tippit and that he also attempted to kill General Edwin Walker. My favorite point was this: “the Single Bullet Theory has still not been proven to be an impossibility.” I guess he thinks that if it’s not impossible, that means it happened. (As we shall see later, with CE 399, it is impossible.) Von Pein even wrote that at Z frame 224, both Kennedy and John Connally were reacting to the same bullet. Which Milicent Cranor, in her previously posted article “Lies for the Eyes”, showed to be a howler. In reality Kennedy is reacting and Connally is not. With a straight face, at the end of this “mountainous” listing, Von Pein wrote, “For aren’t hard facts and evidence always more believable than wild speculation and conjecture?” (Posted 7/17/03)

As one respondent noted to Von Pein, with the work of Josiah Thompson, Sylvia Meagher, and Mark Lane, his list had been pretty much demolished by 1967. Yet he was reviving it as if it were new. Further, while listing it, he did not note any of the serious problems that those writers had pointed out. Von Pein was, of course, starting a classic “troll thread”. One that is deliberately meant to provoke others. “Trolling” was defined by Tim Campbell in his 2001 article on the subject as such: “An Internet troll is a person who delights in sowing discord on the Internet. He … tries to start arguments and upset people … To them, other Internet users are not quite human but are a kind of digital abstraction … Trolls are utterly impervious to criticism … .You cannot negotiate with them … you cannot reason with them … For some reason, trolls do not feel they are bound by the rules of courtesy or social responsibility.” Conway duly posted this article, seemingly to warn Von Pein.”~DiEugenio
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Bc. I find it hard to accept JFK as the darling of the third world since I know what the man did in the third world. He tried to overthrow two third world governments. One attempt failed so he continued attempting an overthrow with Operation Mongoose and assassination attempts on Castro. The tragic result of his overthrowing Ngo Dinh Diem is well known. I also note several problems with the scholarship of Mr. DiEugenio’s article.

“In April 1962, Ambassador to India John Kenneth Galbraith volunteered to get a message to North Vietnam through Indian diplomats about a possible truce in return for a phased withdrawal of American forces. Almost everyone at senior levels of the Kennedy administration opposed Galbraith’s venture. The one man who liked the idea was Kennedy, who instructed Assistant Secretary of State Averell Harriman to follow up on the proposal.”

Bc. That is strange since one of the reasons JFK approved the overthrow of Diem was because of rumors that Nhu was talking to the communist. Did JFK think it acceptable for the U.S. to chat with the communist but it wasn’t acceptable for Nhu to do likewise?

Bc. Beginning in the summer of 1963 until near the end of 1964 the communist made an offer to negotiate in hopes of preventing the Americans from escalating the war. They didn’t offer much, just a two year face saving period for the Americans before they rolled over SVN. Kennedy and Johnson both not only ran like hell from it they did all they could to prevent any talks from happening. See “Choosing War”, Fredrik Logevall. So did JFK change his mind or what?

“At a key meeting in Hawaii in May 1963, McNamara was presented with an update on the planning for the withdrawal. He deemed the plans too slow and asked them to be speeded up. (James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, pgs. 366-367) But the point was that the plan was in place. Kennedy activated it in October 1963 by signing National Security Action Memorandum 263, stating that the withdrawal would begin in December of 1963 and be completed in 1965.”

Bc. This is not true. NSAM 263 does not say that. The point isn’t debatable since NSAM 263 has been in print since 1963. It won’t ever be changed although many try.

“In other words, Kennedy’s plan for a military withdrawal wasn’t just some vague notion or, as New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson recently wrote, a belief among his admirers “rooted as much in the romance of ‘what might have been’ as in the documented record.”

Bc. I believe the statement of Abramson is bang on. I believe it is this “what might have been’ oath of the Camelot crowd that makes so many people, even some of some note, dishonestly claim what NSAM 263 says.”
____________________Bill Clarke presents himself as a “military historian”, and yet I cannot find a single article or reference to the man on searches of the Internet. He is also curiously protected from questioning on this matter on JFKfacts. I have attempted to ask Bill directly about his credentials numerous times and these questions never pass moderation.
So Bill Clarke continues to spew this nonsense that those who have a different interpretation of NSAM 263 than his are “dishonest” – despite all of the historical evidence that Kennedy was indeed determined to get the US military out of South East Asia.
I find it disgusting that Mr Clarke is able to go on with his utter bullshit unchallenged because of moderator bias on JFKfacts. It is Clarke that ultimately is dishonest in his interpretation of the overall historical record.

Mr. KENNEDY: “Mr. President, the most powerful single force in the world today is neither communism nor capitalism, neither the H-bomb nor the guided missile it is man’s eternal desire to be free and independent. The great enemy of that tremendous force of freedom is called, for want of a more precise term, imperialism – and today that means Soviet imperialism and, whether we like it or not, and though they are not to be equated, Western imperialism.
Thus the single most important test of American foreign policy today is how we meet the challenge of imperialism, what we do to further man’s desire to be free. On this test more than any other, this Nation shall be critically judged by the uncommitted millions in Asia and Africa, and anxiously watched by the still hopeful lovers of freedom behind the Iron Curtain. If we fail to meet the challenge of either Soviet or Western imperialism, then no amount of foreign aid, no aggrandizement of armaments, no new pacts or doctrines or high-level conferences can prevent further setbacks to our course and to our security.
I am concerned today that we are failing to meet the challenge of imperialism – on both counts – and thus failing in our responsibilities to the free world. I propose, therefore, as the Senate and the Nation prepare to commemorate the 181st anniversary of man’s noblest expression against political repression, to begin a two-part series of speeches, examining America’s role in the continuing struggles for independence that strain today against the forces of imperialism within both the Soviet and Western worlds. My intention is to talk not of general principles, but of specific cases – to propose not partisan criticisms but what I hope will be constructive solutions.
There are many cases of the clash between independence and imperialism in the Soviet world that demand our attention. One, above all the rest, is critically outstanding today – Poland.
The Secretary of State, in his morning news conference, speaking on this subject, suggested that, if people want to do something about the examples of colonialism, they should consider such examples as Soviet-ruled Lithuania and the satellite countries of Czechoslovakia, Poland, and others.
I agree with him. For that reason, within 2 weeks I hope to speak upon an issue which I think stands above all the others; namely, the country of Poland.
There are many cases of the clash between independence and imperialism in the Western World that demand our attention. But again, one, above all the rest, is critically outstanding today – Algeria.
I shall speak this afternoon of our failures and of our future in Algeria and north Africa – and I shall speak of Poland in a later address to this body.”
_____________________________
You won’t understand who Kennedy was if you don’t read this speech.
If this isn’t put in perspective, we cannot understand Kennedy and his views on imperialism – he opposed it, and grasped that it was not only the USSR, but Western Imperialism.
One more quote from that visionary 1957 speech:

“If we are to secure the friendship of the Arab, the African, and the Asian – and we must, despite what Mr. Dulles says about our not being in a popularity contest – we cannot hope to accomplish it solely by means of billion-dollar foreign aid programs. We cannot win their hearts by making them dependent upon our handouts. Nor can we keep them free by selling them free enterprise, by describing the perils of communism or the prosperity of the United States, or limiting our dealings to military pacts. No, the strength of our appeal to these key populations – and it is rightfully our appeal, and not that of the Communists – lies in our traditional and deeply felt philosophy of freedom and independence for all peoples everywhere.
Perhaps it is already too late for the United States to save the West from total catastrophe in Algeria. Perhaps it is too late to abandon our negative policies on these issues, to repudiate the decades of anti-Western suspicion, to press firmly but boldly for a new generation of friendship among equal and independent states. But we dare not fail to make the effort.
Men’s hearts wait upon us–”

10/2/1963 McNamara explains in his book that at a “”very important” National Security Council meeting on Oct. 2, 1963, President Kennedy made three decisions: (1) to completely withdraw all U.S. forces from Vietnam by Dec. 31, 1965; (2) to withdraw 1,000 U.S. troops by the end of 1963 to begin the process; and (3) to make a public announcement, in order to put this decision “”in concrete.” After the Oct. 2 meeting, Kennedy asked McNamara to issue these recommendations as a “”report” from himself as secretary of defense along with Gen. Maxwell Taylor. McNamara made the announcement personally from the steps of the White House. As he headed off to face the reporters, JFK yelled after him, “”And tell them that means all of the helicopter pilots, too.”

10/4/1963 Armed Forces’ Pacific Stars and Stripes, “White House Report: U.S. Troops Seen Out of Vietnam by ’65″

10/11/1963 President Kennedy issues National Security Action Memorandum 263, making official government policy the withdrawal from Vietnam of “1 ,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963″ and ” by the end of 1965 . . . the bulk of U.S. personnel. ”

11/14/1963 JFK said in a press conference: “We do have a new situation there [in Vietnam], and a new government, we hope, an increased effort in the war” and his goal was “to bring Americans home, permit the South Vietnamese to maintain themselves as a free and independent country, and permit democratic forces within the country to operate – which they can, of course, much more freely when the assault from the inside, and which is manipulated from the north, is ended.” He talked about the upcoming Honolulu conference: “How we can bring Americans out of there. That is our object, to bring Americans home.” He said that the exact number of men to be brought home would be determined at the conference, and he added, “I don’t want the United States to have to put troops there.”
[Compliments of David Regan on JFKfacts]
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In the wake of the end of the Cold War and the passage of the 1992 JFK Assassination Records Collection Act, the U.S. Government has declassified an enormous number of formerly-secret documents. Among the most stunning are those pertaining to the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy and its subsequent investigations. The new records contain stark indications of conspiracy, and a great wealth of material concerning the hows and whys of the ensuing coverup. These documents also include startling “new” facts about 1960s foreign policy regarding Vietnam, Cuba, and the other frontlines of the war against Communism.

The revelations in these files remain largely unknown to the public at large. The reasons are complex, involving actual coverup activities, an unresponsive media weary of the unresolved questions, and the unwillingness of mainstream historians to come to grips with the reality of crimes and coverups by government and other institutions of American society.

The goal of this website and History Matters’ other offerings is to shed needed light on the darker aspects of post-World-War-II American politics, and in particular the tumultuous assassinations of the 1960s. The lies and myths about these assassinations have created what has been called a “black hole in history” which warps our understanding of the entire period. Ultimately, an inability to confront our real history endangers democracy and freedom.

March 29, 2015 at 10:18 am
““That looped sequence” you call a “sneak-trick” is still there showing Connally’s movements. How would you explain them? Muscle spasms? Bee sting?”~Jean Davison

I would explain Connally’s movements and expressions; as those of panic upon seeing Kennedy obviously hit after turning towards what he recognized as a rifle shot. Connally is yelling, “my god they’re going to kill us all!”

The 1990s saw the gaps in the declassified record on Vietnam filled in—with spring 1963 plans for the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces. An initial 1000 man pullout (of the approximately 17,000 stationed in Vietnam at that time) was initiated in October 1963, though it was diluted and rendered meaningless in the aftermath of Kennedy’s death. The longer-range plans called for complete withdrawal of U. S. forces and a “Vietnamization” of the war, scheduled to happen largely after the 1964 elections.
The debate over whether withdrawal plans were underway in 1963 is now settled. What remains contentious is the “what if” scenario. What would Kennedy have done if he lived, given the worsening situation in Vietnam after the coup which resulted in the assassination of Vietnamese President Diem?

At the core of the debate is this question: Did President Kennedy really believe the rosy picture of the war effort being conveyed by his military advisors. Or was he onto the game, and instead couching his withdrawal plans in the language of optimism being fed to the White House?

The landmark book JFK and Vietnam asserted the latter, that Kennedy knew he was being deceived and played a deception game of his own, using the military’s own rosy analysis as a justification for withdrawal. Newman’s analysis, with its dark implications regarding JFK’s murder, has been attacked from both mainstream sources and even those on the left. No less than Noam Chomsky devoted an entire book to disputing the thesis.

But declassifications since Newman’s 1992 book have only served to buttress the thesis that the Vietnam withdrawal, kept under wraps to avoid a pre-election attack from the right, was Kennedy’s plan regardless of the war’s success. New releases have also brought into focus the chilling visions of the militarists of that era—four Presidents were advised to use nuclear weapons in Indochina. A recent book by David Kaiser, American Tragedy, shows a military hell bent on war in Asia.

The Vietnam war, instead of ending before it began in earnest, bloomed in the mid-1960s into a nightmare conflict that consumed 58,000 American lives and an unknown number of Vietnamese in the millions. Within America, the divide over the war existed not only in the streets but also within the halls of power, where many decided that the cost was too high.

The divide over foreign policy which smoldered during Kennedy’s Presidency was not limited to Vietnam. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, for instance, military leaders were adamant that the missiles be taken out and Cuba invaded. They were joined in their advocacy by other prominent men of the day, including former Secretary of State Dean Acheson and future Warren Commissioner Richard Russell. It was not learned until a few years ago that tactical nuclear missiles were also present on the island, and Soviet commanders had standing orders allowing their use in defending an invasion of Cuba. The less drastic blockade option which was chosen, vigorously opposed by the hawks, probably averted World War III.

One of the questions posed by the essays on this website is whether the assassination of President Kennedy was rooted in this deep foreign policy divide. Such questions are by their nature speculative and circumstantial. Nonetheless, a close reading of the history of the period, particularly in the light of long-delayed declassifications, makes that chilling possibility seem all too likely.

Forty years have passed since November 22, 1963, yet painful mysteries remain. What, at the moment of his death, was John F. Kennedy’s policy toward Vietnam?

It’s one of the big questions, alternately evaded and disputed over four decades of historical writing. It bears on Kennedy’s reputation, of course, though not in an unambiguous way.

And today, larger issues are at stake as the United States faces another indefinite military commitment that might have been avoided and that, perhaps, also cannot be won. The story of Vietnam in 1963 illustrates for us the struggle with policy failure. More deeply, appreciating those distant events tests our capacity as a country to look the reality of our own history in the eye.

One may usefully introduce the issue by recalling the furor over Robert McNamara’s 1995 memoir In Retrospect. Reaction then focused mainly on McNamara’s assumption of personal responsibility for the war, notably his declaration that his own actions as the Secretary of Defense responsible for it were “terribly, terribly wrong.” Reviewers paid little attention to the book’s contribution to history. In an editorial on April 12, 1995, the New York Times delivered a harsh judgment: “Perhaps the only value of “In Retrospect” is to remind us never to forget that these were men who in the full hubristic glow of their power would not listen to logical warning or ethical appeal.” And in the New York Times Book Review four days later, Max Frankel wrote that

David Halberstam, who applied that ironic phrase [The Best and the Brightest] to his rendering of the tale 23 years ago, told it better in many ways than Mr. McNamara does now. So too, did the Pentagon Papers, that huge trove of documents assembled at Mr. McNamara’s behest when he first recognized a debt to history.
In view of these criticisms, readers who actually pick up McNamara’s book may experience a shock when they scan the table of contents and sees this summary of Chapter 3, titled “The Fateful Fall of 1963: August 24–November 22, 1963”:
A pivotal period of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, punctuated by three important events: the overthrow and assassination of South Vietnam’s president Ngo Dinh Diem; President Kennedy’s decision on October 2 to begin the withdrawal of U.S. forces; and his assassination fifty days later. (Emphasis added.)
Kennedy’s decision on October 2, 1963, to begin the withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Vietnam? Contrary to Frankel, this is not something you will find in Halberstam. You will not find it in Leslie Gelb’s editorial summary in the Gravel edition of The Pentagon Papers, even though several documents that are important to establishing the case for a Kennedy decision to withdraw were published in that edition. Nor, with just three exceptions prior to last spring’s publication of Howard Jones’s Death of a Generation—a milestone in the search for difficult, ferociously hidden truth—will you find it elsewhere in 30 years of historical writing on Vietnam.
Did John F. Kennedy give the order to withdraw from Vietnam?

* * *

Certainly, most Vietnam historians have said “no”—or would have if they considered the question worth posing. They have asserted continuity between Kennedy’s policy and Lyndon Johnson’s, while usually claiming that neither president liked the war and also that Kennedy especially had expressed to friends his desire to get out sometime after the 1964 election.

The view that Kennedy would have done what Johnson did—stay in Vietnam and gradually escalate the war in 1964 and 1965—is held by left, center, and right, from Noam Chomsky to Kai Bird to William Gibbons. It was promoted forcefully over the years by the late Walt Rostow, beginning in 1967 with a thick compilation for Johnson himself of Kennedy’s public statements on Vietnam policy and continuing into the 1990s. Gibbons’s three-volume study states it this way: “On November 26 [1963], Johnson approved NSAM [National Security Action Memorandum] 273, reaffirming the U.S. commitment to Vietnam and the continuation of Vietnam programs and policies of the Kennedy administration.”

Equally, Stanley Karnow writes in his Vietnam: A History (1983) that Johnson’s pledge “essentially signaled a continuation of Kennedy’s policy.” Patrick Lloyd Hatcher, while writing extensively on the Saigon coup, makes no mention at all of the Washington discussions following Johnson’s accession three weeks later. Gary Hess offers summary judgment on the policy that Johnson inherited: “To Kennedy and his fellow New Frontiersmen, it was a doctrine of faith that the problems of Vietnam lent themselves to an American solution.”

Kai Bird’s 1998 biography of McGeorge and William Bundy briefly reviews the discussions of withdrawal reported to have occurred in late 1963 but accepts the general verdict that Kennedy did not intend to quit. So does Fredrik Logevall, whose substantial 1999 book steadfastly insists that the choices Kennedy faced were either escalation or negotiation and did not include withdrawal without negotiation.

All this (and more) is in spite of evidence to the contrary, advanced over the years by a tiny handful of authors. In 1972 Peter Dale Scott first made the case that Johnson’s NSAM 273—the document that Gibbons relied on in making the case for continuity—was in fact a departure from Kennedy’s policy; his essay appeared in Gravel’s edition of The Pentagon Papers. Arthur M. Schlesinger’s Robert Kennedy and His Times tells in a few tantalizing pages of the “first application” in October 1963 “of Kennedy’s phased withdrawal plan.”

A more thorough treatment appeared in 1992, with the publication of John M. Newman’s JFK and Vietnam.1 Until his retirement in 1994 Newman was a major in the U.S. Army, an intelligence officer last stationed at Fort Meade, headquarters of the National Security Agency. As an historian, his specialty is deciphering declassified records—a talent he later applied to the CIA’s long-hidden archives on Lee Harvey Oswald.

Newman’s argument was not a case of “counterfactual historical reasoning,” as Larry Berman described it in an early response.2 It was not about what might have happened had Kennedy lived. Newman’s argument was stronger: Kennedy, he claims, had decided to begin a phased withdrawal from Vietnam, that he had ordered this withdrawal to begin. Here is the chronology, according to Newman:

(1) On October 2, 1963, Kennedy received the report of a mission to Saigon by McNamara and Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). The main recommendations, which appear in Section I(B) of the McNamara-Taylor report, were that a phased withdrawal be completed by the end of 1965 and that the “Defense Department should announce in the very near future presently prepared plans to withdraw 1,000 out of 17,000 U.S. military personnel stationed in Vietnam by the end of 1963.” At Kennedy’s instruction, Press Secretary Pierre Salinger made a public announcement that evening of McNamara’s recommended timetable for withdrawal.

(2) On October 5, Kennedy made his formal decision. Newman quotes the minutes of the meeting that day:

The President also said that our decision to remove 1,000 U.S. advisors by December of this year should not be raised formally with Diem. Instead the action should be carried out routinely as part of our general posture of withdrawing people when they are no longer needed. (Emphasis added.)
The passage illustrates two points: (a) that a decision was in fact made on that day, and (b) that despite the earlier announcement of McNamara’s recommendation, the October 5 decision was not a ruse or pressure tactic to win reforms from Diem (as Richard Reeves, among others, has contended3) but a decision to begin withdrawal irrespective of Diem or his reactions.

(3) On October 11, the White House issued NSAM 263, which states:

The President approved the military recommendations contained in section I B (1-3) of the report, but directed that no formal announcement be made of the implementation of plans to withdraw 1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963.

In other words, the withdrawal recommended by McNamara on October 2 was embraced in secret by Kennedy on October 5 and implemented by his order on October 11, also in secret. Newman argues that the secrecy after October 2 can be explained by a diplomatic reason. Kennedy did not want Diem or anyone else to interpret the withdrawal as part of any pressure tactic (other steps that were pressure tactics had also been approved). There was also a political reason: JFK had not decided whether he could get away with claiming that the withdrawal was a result of progress toward the goal of a self-sufficient South Vietnam.

The alternative would have been to withdraw the troops while acknowledging failure. And this, Newman argues, Kennedy was prepared to do if it became necessary. He saw no reason, however, to take this step before it became necessary. If the troops could be pulled while the South Vietnamese were still standing, so much the better.4 But from October 11 onward the CIA’s reporting changed drastically. Official optimism was replaced by a searching and comparatively realistic pessimism. Newman believes this pessimism, which involved rewriting assessments as far back as the previous July, was a response to NSAM 263. It represented an effort by the CIA to undermine the ostensible rationale of withdrawal with success, and therefore to obstruct implementation of the plan for withdrawal. Kennedy, needless to say, did not share his full reasoning with the CIA.

(4) On November 1 there came the coup in Saigon and the assassination of Diem and Nhu. At a press conference on November 12, Kennedy publicly restated his Vietnam goals. They were “to intensify the struggle” and “to bring Americans out of there.” Victory, which had figured prominently in a similar statement on September 12, was no longer on the list.

(5) The Honolulu Conference of senior cabinet and military officials on November 20–21 was called to review plans in the wake of the Saigon coup. The military and the CIA, however, planned to use that meeting to pull the rug from under the false optimism which some had used to rationalize NSAM 263. However, Kennedy did not himself believe that we were withdrawing with victory. It follows that the changing image of the military situation would not have changed JFK’s decision.

(6) In Honolulu, McGeorge Bundy prepared a draft of what would eventually be NSAM 273. The plan was to present it to Kennedy after the meeting ended. Dated November 21, this draft reflected the change in military reporting. It speaks, for example, of a need to “turn the tide not only of battle but of belief.” Plans to intensify the struggle, however, do not go beyond what Kennedy would have approved: A paragraph calling for actions against the North underscores the role of Vietnamese forces:

7. With respect to action against North Vietnam, there should be a detailed plan for the development of additional Government of Vietnam resources, especially for sea-going activity, and such planning should indicate the time and investment necessary to achieve a wholly new level of effectiveness in this field of action. (Emphasis added.)
(7) At Honolulu, a preliminary plan, known as CINCPAC OPLAN 34-63 and later implemented as OPLAN 34A, was prepared for presentation. This plan called for intensified sabotage raids against the North, employing Vietnamese commandos under U.S. control—a significant escalation.5 While JCS chief Taylor had approved preparation of this plan, it had not been shown to McNamara. Tab E of the meeting’s briefing book, also approved by Taylor and also not sent in advance to McNamara, showed that the withdrawal ordered by Kennedy in October was already being gutted, by the device of substituting for the withdrawal of full units that of individual soldiers who were being rotated out of Vietnam in any event.
(8) The final version of NSAM 273, signed by Johnson on November 26, differs from the draft in several respects. Most are minor changes of wording. The main change is that the draft paragraph 7 has been struck in its entirety (there are two pencil slashes on the November 21 draft), and replaced with the following:

Planning should include different levels of possible increased activity, and in each instance there be estimates such factors as: A. Resulting damage to North Vietnam; B. The plausibility denial; C. Vietnamese retaliation; D. Other international reaction. Plans submitted promptly for approval by authority.
The new language is incomplete. It does not begin by declaring outright that the subject is attacks on the North. But the thrust is unmistakable, and the restrictive reference to “Government of Vietnam resources” is now missing. Newman concludes that this change effectively provided new authority for U.S.–directed combat actions against North Vietnam. Planning for these actions began therewith, and we now know that an OPLAN 34A raid in August 1964 provoked the North Vietnamese retaliation against the destroyer Maddox, which became the first Gulf of Tonkin incident. And this in turn led to the confused incident a few nights later aboard the Turner Joy, to reports that it too had been attacked, and to Johnson’s overnight decision to seek congressional support for “retaliation” against North Vietnam. From this, of course, the larger war then flowed.
* * *
Read whole article at:http://new.bostonreview.net/BR28.5/galbraith.html

Concerning NSAM 273, Peter Dale Scott writes that Chomsky reads “Johnson’s NSAM as if it were as contextless as a Dead Sea Scroll,” dismissing its importance and ignoring “early accounts of it as a ‘major decision,’ a ‘pledge’ that determined ‘all that would follow,’ from journalists as diverse as Tom Wicker, Marvin Kalb, and I. F. Stone.” Scott writes that Chomsky also ignores Taylor’s memo to President Johnson of January 22, 1964, which cites NSAM 273 as authority to “prepare to escalate operations against North Vietnam.”~Ibid
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“McNamara then reproduces the precise wording of the military recommendations from Section I(B) of the report:

We recommend that: [1] General Harkins review with Diem the military changes necessary to complete the military campaign in the Northern and Central areas by the end of 1964, and in the Delta by the end of 1965. [2] A program be established to train Vietnamese so that essential functions now performed by U.S. military personnel can be carried out by Vietnamese by the end of 1965. It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel by that time. [3] In accordance with the program to train progressively Vietnamese to take over military functions, the Defense Department should announce in the very near future presently prepared plans to withdraw 1000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963.
The report then went on to make a number of recommendations to “impress upon Diem our disapproval of his political program.” These matters dealt with the repression of the Buddhists and related issues; the recommendation to announce plans to withdraw 1,000 soldiers is not listed under this heading.
The reason for the ambiguity over the military situation, as well as the vague “it should be possible” wording of the second recommendation, becomes clearer when McNamara describes the National Security Council meeting of October 2, 1963, which revealed a “total lack of consensus” over the battlefield situation:

One faction believed military progress had been good and training had progressed to the point where we could begin to withdraw. A second faction did not see the war as progressing well and did not see the South Vietnamese showing evidence of successful training. But they, too, agreed that we should begin to withdraw. . . . The third faction, representing the majority, considered the South Vietnamese trainable but believed our training had not been in place long enough to achieve results and, therefore, should continue at current levels.
As McNamara’s 1986 oral history, on deposit at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, makes clear (but his book does not), he was himself in the second group, who favored withdrawal without victory—not necessarily admitting or even predicting defeat, but accepting uncertainty as to what would follow. The denouement came shortly thereafter:
After much debate, the president endorsed our recommendation to withdraw 1,000 men by December 31, 1963. He did so, I recall, without indicating his reasoning. In any event, because objections had been so intense and because I suspected others might try to get him to reverse the decision, I urged him to announce it publicly. That would set it in concrete. . . . The president finally agreed, and the announcement was released by Pierre Salinger after the meeting.
Before a large audience at the LBJ Library on May 1, 1995, McNamara restated his account of this meeting and stressed its importance. He confirmed that President Kennedy’s action had three elements: (1) complete withdrawal “by December 31, 1965,” (2) the first 1,000 out by the end of 1963, and (3) a public announcement, to set these decisions “in concrete,” which was made. McNamara also added the critical information that there exists a tape of this meeting, in the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, to which he had access and on which his account is based.
The existence of a taping system in JFK’s oval office had become known over the years, particularly through the release of partial transcripts of the historic meeting of the “ExComm” during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. But the full extent of Kennedy’s taping was not known. And, according to McNamara, access to particular tapes was tightly controlled by representatives of the Kennedy family. When McNamara spoke in Austin, only he and his coauthor, Brian VanDeMark, had been granted the privilege of listening to the actual tape recordings of Kennedy’s White House meetings on Vietnam.”
~James K. Galbraith
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The May conference thus fills in the primary record: plans were under development for the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam. On October 2, 1963, as we have previously seen, President Kennedy made clear his determination to implement those plans—to withdraw 1,000 troops by the end of 1963, and to get almost all the rest out by the end of 1965. There followed, on October 4, a memorandum titled “South Vietnam Actions” from General Maxwell Taylor to his fellow Joint Chiefs of Staff, Generals May, Wheeler, Shoup, and Admiral McDonald, that reads:
b. The program currently in progress to train Vietnamese forces will be reviewed and accelerated as necessary to insure that all essential functions visualized to be required for the projected operational environment, to include those now performed by U.S. military units and personnel, can be assumed properly by the Vietnamese by the end of calendar year 1965. All planning will be directed towards preparing RVN forces for the withdrawal of all U.S. special assistance units and personnel by the end of calendar year 1965. (Emphasis added.)
“All planning” is an unconditional phrase. There is no contingency here, or elsewhere in this memorandum. The next paragraph reads:

c. Execute the plan to withdraw 1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963 per your DTG 212201Z July, and as approved for planning by JCS DTG 062042Z September. Previous guidance on the public affairs annex is altered to the extent that the action will now be treated in low key, as the initial increment of U.S. forces whose presence is no longer required because (a) Vietnamese forces have been trained to assume the function involved; or (b) the function for which they came to Vietnam has been completed. (Emphasis added.)
This resolves the question of how the initial withdrawal was to be carried out. It was not to be a noisy or cosmetic affair, designed to please either U.S. opinion or to change policies in Saigon. It was rather to be a low-key, matter-of-fact beginning to a process that would play out over the following two years. The final paragraph of Taylor’s memorandum underlines this point by directing that “specific checkpoints will be established now against which progress can be evaluated on a quarterly basis.” There is much more in the JCS documents to show that Kennedy was well aware of the evidence that South Vietnam was, in fact, losing the war. But it hardly matters. The withdrawal decided on was unconditional, and did not depend on military progress or lack of it.

The Escalation at Kennedy’s Death

Four days after Kennedy was killed, NSAM 273 incorporated the new president’s directives into policy. It made clear that the objectives of Johnson’s policy remained the same as Kennedy’s: “to assist the people and government of South Vietnam to win their contest against the externally directed and supported Communist conspiracy” through training support and without the application of overt U.S. military force. But Johnson had also approved intensified planning for covert action against North Vietnam by CIA-supported South Vietnamese forces.

With this, McNamara confirms one of Newman’s central claims: NSAM 273 changed policy. Yes, the “central objectives” remained the same: a Vietnamese war with no “overt U.S. military force.” But covert force is still “U.S. military force.” And that was introduced or at least first approved, as McNamara writes, by NSAM 273 within four days of Kennedy’s assassination.Moreover, McNamara effectively supports Newman on the meaning of NSAM 273’s seventh paragraph, which was inserted in the draft (as we have seen) sometime between November 21 and 26—after the Honolulu meeting had adjourned and probably after Kennedy died.

Conclusion

John F. Kennedy had formally decided to withdraw from Vietnam, whether we were winning or not. Robert McNamara, who did not believe we were winning, supported this decision. The first stage of withdrawal had been ordered. The final date, two years later, had been specified. These decisions were taken, and even placed, in an oblique and carefully limited way, before the public.”~Ibid
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NSAM 273 was essentially a reiteration of NSAM 263, seen as necessary because the situation in Vietnam had changed due to the overthrow of the Diem regime. It only became more than that when it was altered to allow for covert forces to escalate into attacks into the north. This seemingly subtle alteration happened between the first draft in Honolulu and the new Johnson White House.

It is clear that the mainstream has misinterpreted both NSAMs, as is explained by those closest to Kennedy. JFK had plainly decided to pull out of South East Asia militarily, and pursue a negotiated peace.
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On October 5, Kennedy made his formal decision. Newman quotes the minutes of the meeting that day:

The President also said that our decision to remove 1,000 U.S. advisers by December of this year should not be raised formally with Diem. Instead the action should be carried out routinely as part of our general posture of withdrawing people when they are no longer needed. (Emphasis added.)
The passage illustrates two points: (a) that a decision was in fact made on that day, and (b) that despite the earlier announcement of McNamara’s recommendation, the October 5 decision was not a ruse or pressure tactic to win reforms from Diem (as Richard Reeves, among others, has contended but a decision to begin withdrawal irrespective of Diem or his reactions.)

On October 11, the White House issued NSAM 263, which states:

The President approved the military recommendations contained in section I B (1-3) of the report, but directed that no formal announcement be made of the implementation of plans to withdraw 1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963.

In other words, the withdrawal recommended by McNamara on October 2 was embraced in secret by Kennedy on October 5 and implemented by his order on October 11, also in secret. Newman argues that the secrecy after October 2 can be explained by a diplomatic reason. Kennedy did not want Diem or anyone else to interpret the withdrawal as part of any pressure tactic (other steps that were pressure tactics had also been approved). There was also a political reason: JFK had not decided whether he could get away with claiming that the withdrawal was a result of progress toward the goal of a self-sufficient South Vietnam.

The alternative would have been to withdraw the troops while acknowledging failure. And this, Newman argues, Kennedy was prepared to do if it became necessary. He saw no reason, however, to take this step before it became necessary. If the troops could be pulled while the South Vietnamese were still standing, so much the better. But from October 11 onward the CIA’s reporting changed drastically. Official optimism was replaced by a searching and comparatively realistic pessimism. Newman believes this pessimism, which involved rewriting assessments as far back as the previous July, was a response to NSAM 263. It represented an effort by the CIA to undermine the ostensible rationale of withdrawal with success, and therefore to obstruct implementation of the plan for withdrawal. Kennedy, needless to say, did not share his full reasoning with the CIA.http://new.bostonreview.net/BR28.5/galbraith.html
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I have never participated on a blog where the moderators were as biased as those at JFKfacts.
Less than half of my commentary to Bill Clarke is ever published there. There is nothing belligerent or nasty in those comments either. It is baffling and it is stupid. I might as well give up on addressing Bill Clarke entirely, it is futile. Fuck it!
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State Secret
Wiretapping in Mexico City, Double Agents, and the Framing of Lee Oswald
by Bill Simpich

Preface

This book is about the counterintelligence activity behind the JFK story and its role in the death of President Kennedy. It examines how the existence of tapes of a man in Mexico City, identifying himself as Oswald, were discovered before the Kennedy assassination and hidden after the assassination. On November 23, 1963, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote President Lyndon Johnson and the Secret Service chief, telling both of them that the caller was not Lee Harvey Oswald. These tapes showed that the supposed “lone gunman” had been impersonated just weeks before the killing of JFK, tying him to Cuban and Soviet employees in a manner that would cause great consternation in the halls of power on November 22.

“Marked Cards”
“The person who ran the molehunts was James Angleton, CIA’s chief of counterintelligence and a legend in the Agency. An avid fisherman, he specialized in the use of lures. He was known as “the Angler”. Angleton’s main task was to stop spies from infiltrating the CIA itself. In 1955, he created the Special Investigations Group, known as CI-SIG. Angleton told the Church Committee that CI/SIG’s role was to prevent the penetration of spies into the CIA and the government by code clerks and others with access to sensitive files. CI-SIG would work with the CIA’s Office of Security, who provided them with access to the personnel files of all the CIA employees. No one knew more about the CIA employees than these two offices.
Angleton’s intelligence analyst Ann Egerter of CI-SIG (Counterintelligence, Special Investigations Group) opened biographical files – known as 201 files – on Oswald and Webster while they were in the Soviet Union. Egerter’s main job as an analyst was to spy on individuals inside the CIA itself. She referred to CI-SIG as the “the office that spied on spies”.
Egerter had all of the CIA’s documents available to her by working with the Office of Security, which also had sole access to CIA employee personnel files. By embedding false statements – the “marked cards” – within Oswald’s file, and then tracking those people that had access to Oswald’s file, Egerter and her molehunters could determine if this information had surfaced to unauthorized personnel.”Simpich

One of these ‘marked cards’ showed up in Dallas in the first broadcasts by the DPD dispatcher using the 5ft 10in, 165lb “Oswald” description. This means that the moles were the perpetrators running the assassination. They played the marked card.
[See below]:
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The stunted epistemology of a people regimented and brainwashed from cradle to grave is difficult to counter with rational argumentation alone. They are stuck in jejune, like little children needing daddy’s approval. They are distracted by shiny things and trite toys and temporary shattered substance.
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Kennedy’s Planned Vietnam Pullout
This is a selection, pp. 124-127 of James Douglass’s JFK and the Unspeakable

Mansfield cautioned Kennedy against trying to win a war in support of an unpopular government by “a truly massive commitment of American military personnel and other resources — in short going to war fully ourselves against the guerrillas — and the establishment of some form of neocolonial rule in South Vietnam.” To continue the president’s policy, Mansfield warned, may “draw us inexorably into some variation of the unenviable position in Vietnam which was formerly occupied by the French.”
Kennedy was stunned by his friend’s critique. He was again confronted by his own first understanding of Vietnam, shared first by Edmund Gullion, repeated by John Kenneth Galbraith, and now punched back into his consciousness by Mike Mansfield.

The Senate Majority Leader’s comparison between the French rule and JFK’s policy stung the president. But the more Kennedy thought about Mansfield’s challenging words, the more they struck him as the truth — a truth he didn’t want to accept but had to. He summed up his reaction to the Mansfield report by a razor-sharp comment on himself, made to aide Kenny O’Donnell: “I got angry with Mike for disagreeing with our policy so completely, and I got angry with myself because I found myself agreeing with him.”
By accepting the truth of Mansfield’s critique of an increasingly disastrous policy, JFK turned a corner on Vietnam. Just as Ambassador Winthrop Brown’s honest analysis had helped turn Kennedy toward a new policy in Laos, so did Mike Mansfield’s critical report return him to an old truth on Vietnam. A little noted characteristic of John Kennedy, perhaps remarkable in a U.S. president, was his ability to listen and learn.
Isaiah Berlin, the British philosopher, once observed of Kennedy: “I’ve never known a man who listened to every single word that one uttered more attentively. And he replied always very relevantly. He didn’t obviously have ideas in his own mind which he wanted to expound, or for which he simply used one’s own talk as an occasion, as a sort of launching pad. He really listened to what one said and answered that.”
[…]
As Mansfield knew, Kennedy was in fact changing his mind in favor of a complete military withdrawal from Vietnam. However, JFK thought such a policy would never be carried out by any of his possible opponents in the 1964 election, and that its announcement now would block his own reelection. Neither of the two most likely Republican presidential candidates, New York governor Nelson Rockefeller or Arizona senator Barry Goldwater, had any tolerance whatsoever for a possible withdrawal from Vietnam. In the context of 1963 presidential Cold War politics, a Vietnam withdrawal was the unthinkable. President John F. Kennedy was not only thinking the unthinkable. He was on the verge of doing it. But he wanted to be able to do it — by being reelected president. So he lied to the public about what he was thinking.
Kennedy made all this explicit in a conversation with Mike Mansfield. It happened in the spring of 1963 after Mansfield again criticized the president on Vietnam, this time at a White House breakfast attended by the leading members of Congress. Kennedy was annoyed by the criticism before colleagues, but invited Mansfield into his office to talk about Vietnam. Kenny O’Donnell, who sat in on part of their meeting, has described it:
“The President told Mansfield that he had been having serious second thoughts about Mansfield’s argument and that he now agreed with the Senator’s thinking on the need for a complete military withdrawal from Vietnam.

”’But I can’t do it until 1965 — after I’m reelected,’ Kennedy told Mansfield.
“President Kennedy explained, and Mansfield agreed with him, that if he announced a withdrawal of American military personnel from Vietnam before the 1964 election, there would be a wild conservative outcry against returning him to the Presidency for a second term.
“After Mansfield left the office, the President said to me, ‘In 1965, I’ll become one of the most unpopular Presidents in history. I’ll be damned everywhere as a Communist appeaser. But I don’t care. If I tried to pull out completely now from Vietnam, we would have another Joe McCarthy red scare on our hands, but I can do it after I’m reelected. So we had better make damned sure that I am reelected.”‘

Nevertheless, to government insiders, Kennedy began to tip his hand. In preparation for a complete military withdrawal from Vietnam by 1965, the president wanted to initiate the decision-making process in 1963. Yet he still didn’t even have the plan for withdrawal he had asked his military leaders, through McNamara, to draw up a year ago.
Finally, at the May 6, 1963, SECDEF Conference in Honolulu, the Pacific Command presented the president’s long-sought plan. However, McNamara immediately had to reject its extended time line, which was so slow that U.S. numbers would not even reach a minimum level until fiscal year 1966.164 The Defense Secretary said he wanted the pace revised “to speed up replacement of U.S. units by GVN units as fast as possible.”

The May 1963 meeting in Honolulu took place one month before Kennedy would give his American University address. It is in the context of that dawning light of peace in the spring of 1963, when Kennedy and Khrushchev were about to begin their rapprochement, that McNamara again shocked his military hierarchy on Vietnam. He ordered them to begin an actual U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam that fall. As the Pentagon Papers described this change of tide, McNamara “decided that 1,000 U.S. military personnel should be withdrawn from South Vietnam by the end of Calendar Year 63 and directed that concrete plans be so drawn Up.”

McNamara’s startling order would be met with more resistance by the Joint Chiefs. They saw where Kennedy was going, on Vietnam as on the Cold War in general. They were not going to go there with him.
The Diem government in South Vietnam was alarmed by the Mansfield report, as the U.S. government knew. Diem’s brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, whom Mansfield had singled out for criticism, understood precisely what the report meant. As a State Department memorandum noted, “The reaction [to the Mansfield report] within the GVN [Government of Vietnam], particularly at the higher levels, has been sharp. We are informed by Saigon that the GVN, and in particular Counselor Ngo Dinh Nhu, sees the report as a possible prelude to American withdrawal.”http://www.proudprimate.com/resources/jfk_124-7.htm
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The President remarked that if the situation in Viet-Nam was now so serious he wondered why the recruitment of troops and the training of police, who could become effective only a year or two hence, would be of any use. He also wondered why, if there were only 10,000 guerrillas, an increase from 150 to 170,000 in the army was necessary.
. . .
Mr. Allen Dulles emphasized the need for speed and for doing those things which would increase immediately the anti-guerrilla capability in Viet-Nam. With Mr. Durbrow he also mentioned the limited efforts being made to produce South Vietnamese guerrillas capable of harassing the north Vietnamese.
. . . . .
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I consider the 1.5 centimeter entry wound to Connally’s armpit a settled point. Whether our opposition wants to go on about the ‘Operative Report’ or not. Dr.Shaw gave his testimony to the WC under oath, and corrected his operative report.

I consider Crime Scene Protocol for 1963 settled as well. It is in the record that up until the 1980’s it was standard procedure for FBI and all law enforcement to make a unique mark on all items such as bullets, and shell husks.

Thus I consider the chain of custody for ‘the Magic Bullet’ broken – that bullet is inadmissible to the case in my opinion.

This would apply to the other bullets and shells found in the TBTB as well. And it applies to the Carcano rifle itself.

I also consider Dr Dolce as an expert in ballistics at Edgewood Arsenal to be a settled matter, as per the documentation made available to HSCA. Therefore his opinion on the pristine condition of the Magic Bullet being impossible trumps the opinions of Olivier and Dziemian.

Whether our adversaries wish to waffle on the point, I consider this a legal case, to be judged by legal standards.
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At the time of the assassination, Dr Joseph Dolce had been the US Army’s most senior expert in wound ballistics. He had participated in informal discussions with members of the Warren Commission staff, but was not called to offer his opinion for the record. When the House Select Committee on Assassinations reviewed the case, Dolce wrote to his senator, offering to appear before the committee. His letter is reproduced below.
As well as questioning the Warren Commission’s decision to ignore his evidence, Dolce made several pertinent points:
The two doctors whose evidence the commission did take, Olivier and Dziemian, did not testify in accordance with their experimental findings.
Exit wounds are invariably larger than entrance wounds, as was the case with all ten of the Edgewood Arsenal experiments on human wrists. The larger wound on Connally’s wrist, however, was assumed to be the entrance wound.
The pathologists at the autopsy should have dissected the bullet’s supposed path through the president’s neck.
The CE 399 bullet could not have caused so much damage and remained virtually intact: “one bullet striking the President’s neck, the Governor’s chest and wrist, should be badly deformed, as our experiments at the Edgewood Arsenal proved.”

138 – DESCRIPTION OF GOVERNOR CONNALLY’S WOUNDS
(369) Dr. Robert Shaw’s operative record characterizes the posterior
wound of entrance as follows
It was found that the wound of entrance was just lateral to
the right scapula close [to] the axilla yet had passed through
the latysmus [latissimus] dorsi muscle * * * the wound of
entrance was approximately three centimeters in its longest
diameter * * * (58)
(370) A report on a committee interview with Dr. Shaw included
the following :
The rear entrance wound was not 3 centimeters [in diameter]
as indicated in one of the operative notes. It was a
puncture-type wound, as if a bullet had struck the body at a
slight declination [i .e ., not at a right angle] . The wound was
actually approximately 1.5 centimeters in diameter. The
ragged edges of the wound were surgically cut away, effectively
enlarging it to approximately 3 centimeters. (59)http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol7/pdf/HSCA_Vol7_M53b_Connally.pdf

Débridement in the surgical context means “wound incision”. Shaw certainly may have been describing Connally’s back wound after his débridement of that wound. This would be the reason he amended what his operative record at his WC testimony.http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/jfkinfo/app8.htm – Parkland ‘Operative Reports’.

Crime Scene Protocol 1963
It was standard practice and mandated by FBI protocol in 1963 (up until the 1980s) to mark a shell or hull with a unique mark for chains of custody.
“Police Markings”
Second, an object that is inscribed with the initials or markings of a police officer or other person may be readily identifiable. In such cases, the person converts a nonunique
object into a readily identifiable one by placing distinctive markings on it. This practice is recommended in crime scene and evidence collection manuals. See
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Handbook of Forensic Science 100 (rev. ed. 1984); C. O’Hara, Fundamentals of Criminal Investigation 79-84 (5th ed. 1980).”http://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1308&context=faculty_publications
Also see: Bill Simpich on lack of chain of custody of all of the bullets and shell husks in the JFK case.
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http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/18th_Issue/connally.html
The Wounding of Governor John Connally by Ron Hepler
Mr. DODD: “So, you are still looking at the President and it is your recollection that you then heard what sounded like a second shot?
Mrs. CONNALLY: “Yes.
Mr. DODD: “Is that correct?
Mrs. CONNALLY: “Yes. What was a second shot.”
Mr. DODD: “At that point your husband, Governor Connally, slumped over in your direction?”
Mrs. CONNALLY: “No, he lunged forward and then just kind of collapsed.”
. . . . . .
Breakability: CE-399 and the Diminishing Velocity Theory by John Hunt
The Single-Bullet Theory
After a flimsy investigation, the Warren Commission told us only that the SBT was possible, not that it actually happened. Then, in their Report, the Warren Commissioners disingenuously downplayed the fact the Kennedy and Connally must have been hit by the same bullet or conspiracy is proven:

3. Although it is not necessary to any essential findings of the Commission to determine just which shot hit Governor Connally, there is very persuasive evidence from the experts to indicate that the same bullet which pierced the President’s throat also caused Governor Connally’s wounds. [WCR19]

Shaw told Petty the wound was not 3 cm, then diagramed it to scale at 1.5 cm. I searched for and found the original drawing marked by Shaw for the HSCA. (See Figure 1.):http://www.history-
Petty was correct; Shaw’s scale drawing of the entry hole was “1.5 x 0.8 cm.” That Shaw was of the opinion that the entry hole in Connally’s back was not 3 cm is also backed up by his Warren Commission testimony where he described the wound was “approximately a centimeter and a half in length.”[20] Fourteen years later, Shaw told HSCA staffer, Andrew Purdy the same thing. This is how Purdy characterized Shaw’s recollection:

“The rear entrance wound was not 3 cm as indicated in one of the operative notes. It was a puncture-type wound, as if a bullet had struck the body at a slight declination (i.e. not at a right angle). The wound was actually approximately 1.5 cm. The ragged edges of the wound were surgically cut away, effectively enlarging it to approximately 3 cm. [7HSCA325] (Emphasis is original.)

Notice that in both the Petty and Purdy interviews, Shaw is reported to have been of the opinion that the Connally’s wound was created by a bullet that hit the skin on an angle and was not 3 cm in width as originally reported. The size of the entry hole as derived from Shaw’s diagram (1.5 x 0.8 cm) is backed up by the size of the holes in the shirt and coat Connally wore that day.”
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File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat
I have the full Dolce interview ad videotape … Fort Detrick was part of the army cemponont of which Edgewood was part, … to put together a book about Edgewood Arsenal, the Army’s … Also, have you ever heard of a pathologist Dr. Richard.

“The truth about this was provided by the Army’s and the Commission’s top expert who when he told the truth was dropped like a hot iron. Dr. Charles Dolce said the official theorizing about that wrist wound was absolutely impossible. He was asked to return to the Army installation where he did his work, the Edgewood arsenal of the Army’s Aberdeen, Maryland Proving Grounds, and perform tests to prove his point. He did. He photographed the damaged bones and the bullets. Every one of those bullets was severely damaged, not left without a scratch as in the official mythology. The Commission then ignored him and those tests because they proved the single bullet theory’s impossible.”

“That press conference was the first press conference of the LBJ White House and it was the White House that had the file and the extra copies of the tapes and transcripts and which gave copies to the media. It is headed, “NEWS CONFERENCE.” It is identified as “#1.” It then is headed, “At the White House with Wayne Hayes.” It is dated November 22, 1963. It is timed at 3:16 P.M. CST, with “Friday” and “Dallas, Texas” following. The first words are:
“Mr. Hawks: Let me have your attention, please.”
He then told the assembled reporters that they had asked to speak to the doctors Perry and Clark and he had them there to respond to reporters’ questions.
The transcript is nine legal-sized pages long.
During the press conference Perry was asked three times, first “Where was the entrance wound” and he replied, “There was an entrance wound in the neck.” The full transcript is appended. (see Exhibit 63).
This is what meant the end of the preconception with which the Commission began and Specter knew it only too well.”~Harold Weisberg
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“The official “solution” to the assassination of the President, which I emphasize means a coup d’etat, is based on known perjury that was protected officially.”~Harold Weisberg

Harold Weisberg (April 8, 1913 – February 21, 2002)[1] served as an Office of Strategic Services officer during World War II, a U.S. Senate staff member and investigative reporter, an investigator for the Senate Committee on Civil Liberties,[2] and a U.S. State Department intelligence analyst who devoted 40 years of his life to researching and writing about the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. He wrote ten self-published and published books and approximately thirty-five unpublished books related to the details for those assassinations, mostly with respect to Kennedy’s. He who wrote the first book critical of the Warren Commission Report.
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“Treating surgeon, Robert Shaw, MD, reported that Governor Connally’s back wound was an “elongated entry wound, 3cm (ca. 1.2 inches) (sic) in its longest direction,” according to his op note, and so “is entirely consistent with a destabilized bullet … .” However, the testimony of FBI Examiner Robert Frazier regarding the Governor’s jacket is in conflict.

In Volume V of the Warren Commission testimony, Frazier reported a 5/8-inch (1.5-cm) elongated hole in this garment confirming a destabilized, yawing ‘magic’ bullet as the source of the governor’s upper torso wound. Thus the entrance wound in the Governor’s back supposedly measured 3-cm, about 1.2-inches, while the corresponding hole in his jacket measured but 1.5-cm, or 5/8th inches. A simple reading of Dr. Shaw’s Warren Commission testimony and evidence from the House Select Committee quickly resolves the conflict.

As researcher Milicent Cranor first pointed out, the Governor’s back wound measured 1.5 cm in its largest diameter when Dr. Shaw first examined him, exactly the size of the “entrance wound” in his jacket. In testimony to the Warren Commission and to the House Select Committee, Dr. Shaw repeatedly explained that 3-cm was the size of the wound after he had surgically debrided it. The House Select Committee offered a clear explanation. Dr. Shaw, it reported, had said, “The rear entrance wound was not 3 centimeters [in diameter] (sic) as indicated in one of the operative notes. It was a puncture-type wound, as if a bullet had struck the body at a slight declination [i.e., not at a right angle] (sic). The wound was actually approximately 1.5 centimeters in diameter. The ragged edges of the wound were surgically cut away, effectively enlarging it to approximately 3 centimeters.” The wound’s true size was further corroborated by the HSCA’s finding that the entrance defect in the back of the Governor’s shirt, much like that in his jacket, measured .8-cm by 1.3-cm.

Thus the “wounds” in the Governor’s shirt, jacket and back mutually corroborate a fairly small, “puncture-type wound,” one that resulted, as Dr. Shaw put it, as “if a bullet had struck the (Governor’s) body at a slight declination.”

It is to be expected that bullets not striking perfectly perpendicular to their targets will leave an ovoid wound, just as the wound in JFK’s scalp did. The autopsy report discloses that, like Connally’s back wound, Kennedy’s scalp wound measured 1.5 by .6 cm, and it has never been suggested that the penetrating bullet that caused JFK’s ovoid scalp wound had hit something else first.”
. . . . . . . .
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This month, at his home, Charbonneau introduced me to James and Kimberly Petrimoulx, both experienced lip readers, and their son Jimmy, who provided valuable rapid translation. We used a videotape copy of the Zapruder film for general context, and for facial detail we studied high-quality complete sequences of Zapruder frame slides. Even with these, there were limitations to what could be learned from the film, but three hours of close and repeated study produced some results which may be of interest to our colleagues:

225 Although Mr. and Ms. Petrimoulx had not previously studied any of these materials, they noted immediately that President Kennedy was already shot when he emerged from behind the Stemmons Freeway sign.
about 236 Gov. Connally begins to show a startled, frightened reaction, but no sign of pain; then he seems to be shot.
242 to 250 Gov. Connally is talking, saying “No, no, no, no.” turning to his right, in obvious pain.
255 to 287 Gov. Connally is screaming and talking (his face is in shadow; he may be saying, “My God, they’re going to kill us all,” based on what can be seen of his expressions); President Kennedy, meanwhile, is fainting.
302 Gov. Connally is clearly in intense pain.
312 to 320s Gov. and Mrs. Connally seem to be talking (his mouth is moving; she testified “John said nothing” after he slumped back into her lap).
320s Gov. Connally’s mouth seems to be forming the word “Go.”http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/listen.htm
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In early 1967, Life released a statement that four frames of the camera original (208–211) had been accidentally destroyed, and the adjacent frames damaged, by a Life photo lab technician on November 23, 1963.
These frames are just prior to Kennedy going behind the sign. I propose that these frames show Kennedy’s first reaction to the shot to his throat. Therefore, Connally could not possibly be reacting to a hit from that bullet.
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Summation on the Magic Bullet
The Magic Bullet story is not a viable option. There is not a single bit of evidence to back it up. In fact all of the evidence at hand proves that it is false. It is as absurd as it sounds upon first reflection.

There is no legitimate chain of custody for CE#399.

There is no legitimate chain of custody for any of the bullets or shell husks said to be found in the TBDB so-called “snipers nest”

There is no proven path of a bullet passing through JFK’s shallow back wound and exiting what was clearly an entrance wound in his throat.

There is only one viable answer, CE#399 was a planted prop. The ‘snipers-nest’ was a stage created by the conspirators. Oswald was a patsy, just as he claimed. President Kennedy was killed in a coup d’etat perpetrated by the National Security State itself.
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G: Are you aware of the claim that CE399 was “switched” from a six-groove bullet to a four-groove bullet? If so, will you give us your professional opinion?

MacP: No knowledge about this claim. For about 30 years, I have paid almost no attention to any aspect of the Kennedy assassination not directly related to wound ballistics.

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/macpher.htm
So MacPherson knows nothing of the total lack of chain of custody of the Magic Bullet. Even though the claim of a switch is indeed “directly related to wound ballistics.”
He knows nothing of any of the further evidence, such as Dr Shaw’s testimony that the wound on Connally’s back armpit was 1.5 cm and not the 3 cm wound noted in the operative report. That therefore Lattimer must be mistaken to claim Connally has a 3 or more inch scar on his back.
At any rate, it is out of place to make commentary on a matter that ones doesn’t comprehend the larger context in which the ballistics must fit. The likelihood that there were no Carcano bullets involved in any of these hits is almost a certainty, considering the implications in the missing initial links in the chain of custody of CE 933. This break in the chain of custody eliminates the viability of the Magic Bullet as legitimate evidence.

Combined with a penumbra of other evidence in this case, it is beyond reasonable doubt that all of the so-called evidence for the shots from behind were props for a staged set-up of the designated patsy, Lee Harvey Oswald. The most modern ballistics and trajectory analysis proves the throat shot and the head shot to Kennedy came from the front. Kinetic energy will move a body in the direction of the trajectory of the missile, after initial resistance and the telltale appearance of backspatter. Kennedy’s head was forced back ward, and his limp torso fell back with it, then he fell to his left and leaned on Jackie until she turned for the trunk of the car. That head shot was incapacitating, Kennedy was dead-limp, and he wasn’t having muscle spasms. The evidence is right before your eyes in the Zapruder film.
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Magic Bullet
“Although it is not necessary to any essential findings of the Commission to determine just which shot hit Governor Connally, there is very persuasive evidence to indicate that the same bullet which pierced the President’s throat also caused Governor Connally’s wounds” (WCR:19).
The alignment of the points of entry was only indicative and not conclusive that one bullet hit both men. The exact positions of the men could not be re-created; thus, the angle could only be approximated. (WCR: 107).

Allen Dulles, Warren Commission member, fired by JFK as CIA Director stated during the Commission Executive Session just prior to the report publication, “But nobody reads. Don’t believe people read in this country. There will be a few professors that will read the record…The public will read very little.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Report is entirely misleading, however, when it asserts that the doctors felt that the wrist fragments were left “from the rear portion of the bullet” and that this bullet subsequently punctured the thigh. In their original testimonies, the doctors did not postulate from what part of the bullet the fragments had come. The intent of the Report is obvious, when we consider that the only possible surface from which CE 399 could have lost fragments is its rear, or base, where the lead core was naturally exposed. The thinking of the doctors, however, tended to rule out the possibility of CE 399’s having gone into the wrist at all, because they felt that this wound was the result of an irregular or fragmented missile (6H90-91, 98-99, 102). Dr. Robert Shaw, who conducted the operation on the Governor’s chest, was puzzled as to how the wrist wounds could have appeared as they did if a whole bullet had caused them (6H91).
According to Dr. Shaw, it is not exactly correct to assert that a whole bullet entered the thigh. In the portion of his original testimony cited by the Report, Dr. Shaw explained the theory of one bullet’s causing all the Governor’s wounds in this way: “I have always felt that the wounds of Governor Connally could be explained by the passage of one missile through his chest, striking his wrist and a fragment of it going on into his left thigh” (6H91; emphasis added).
What the Report does not reflect is the substantial change in Drs. Shaw’s and Gregory’s opinions when shown the bullet that allegedly produced the Governor’s wounds. The first indication of varied opinions came through this exchange between Dr. Shaw and Commissioners Cooper, Dulles, and McCloy. Dr. Shaw had been asked about the possibility that one bullet had caused the Governor’s wounds:
Dr. Shaw: . . . this is still a possibility. But I don’t feel that it is the only possibility.
Sen. Cooper: Why do you say you don’t think it is the only possibility? What causes you now to say that it is the location —
Dr. Shaw: This is again the testimony that I believe Dr. Gregory will be giving, too. It is a matter of whether the wrist wound could be caused by the same bullet, and we felt that it could but but we had not seen the bullets until today, and we still do not know which bullet actually inflicted the wound on Governor Connally.
Mr. Dulles: Or whether it was one or two rounds?
Dr. Shaw: Yes.
Mr. Dulles: Or two bullets?
Dr. Shaw: Yes; or three.
Mr. McCloy: You have no firm opinion that all these three wounds were caused by one bullet?
Dr. Shaw: I have no firm opinion. . . . Asking me now if it was true. If you had asked me a month ago I would have [had].
Mr. McCloy: Could they have been caused by one bullet, in your opinion?
Dr. Shaw: They could.
Mr. McCloy: I gather that what the witness is saying is that it is possible that they might have been caused by one bullet. But that he has no firm opinion now that they were.
Mr. Dulles: As I understand it too. Is our understanding correct?
Dr. Shaw: That is correct. (4H109; emphasis added)

It might be regarded as highly culpable that Commissioners Dulles and McCloy, who professed such a clear understanding of Dr. Shaw’s position, signed a report stating the opposite of what Dr. Shaw had testified to, with a footnote referring to prior statements withdrawn by Shaw in their presence. Dr. Shaw’s testimony is explicit that, prior to seeing the bullet in evidence, he felt that all the Governor’s wounds were caused by one bullet; when shown the bullet, CE 399, which allegedly did this damage, he retracted his original opinion. What was it about this bullet that caused such a change of judgment?
Under questioning by Arlen Specter, Dr. Shaw summed up the indications that CE 399 did not produce the Governor’s wounds. He had first been asked to comment on the possibility of a bullet’s having caused the wounds:
Mr. Specter: When you started to comment about it not being possible, was that in reference to the existing mass and shape of bullet 399?
Dr. Shaw: I thought you were referring directly to the bullet shown as Exhibit 399.
Mr. Specter: What is your opinion as to whether bullet 399 could have inflicted all the wounds on the Governor then, without respect at this point to the wound of the President’s neck?
Dr. Shaw: I feel that there would be some difficulty in explaining all of the wounds as being inflicted by bullet Exhibit 399 without causing more in the way of loss of substance to the bullet or deformation of the bullet. (4H114)
The bullet struck the femur,www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/PG/PGchp5.html
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No. And so far, my current process of corrolation of this section with the work of the 1978 House Select Committe on Assassinations’ investigation supports the reasons for this opinion I’ve laid out below.http://kegisland.com/connolly–the-magic-bullet.html
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He [JFK] was searching for a way to relieve the ambassador [Henry Cabot Lodge] of his duties and to gradually diminish the U.S. presence in Vietnam. JFK had scheduled a White House meeting on this subject for Monday morning, November 25.”~Jackie Kennedyhttp://carlanthonyonline.com/2013/11/22/a-second-jfk-term-jackie-kennedys-notes-on-what-was-planned/
. . . .By the way, Bill Clarke can fuck-off with his accusing anyone who disagrees with his opinions on JFK’s intent to withdraw the military from Indochina as ‘dishonest’. I have had enough of his bullshit on JFKfacts, and will not respond to him directly there; because all I really want to tell this arrogant prick is, fuck off!
Concerning NSAM 273, Bill Clarke reads Johnson’s NSAM as if it were as contextless as a Dead Sea Scroll.
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I am having problems following Bob Prudhomme’s reasoning on the Connally wounds thread. He seems to be relying on this FBI report about the distance of the head shot, as well as making the assumption that Kennedy’s back wound was caused by a Carcano bullet, and in doing so insinuating that the back wound was not actually shallow…[??]

As per the position of the limousine in the Z-film, he and I went through this in great detail on a previous thread. He is flat out wrong. That limo was directly in front of the pavilion when Kennedy was hit in the head, despite what ever distances in feet the FBI report claims it was from the TBDB – which is irrelevant as the shot came from the front. The nose of the limo was no further than 3 ft at most from the steps. This can be seen in the Muchmore film and the Nix film as well. He is also wrong about Hill dismounting the follow-up car before the head shot.

Of course the problem I have with these issues is that he confuses everything with such obvious nonsense. I don’t think it is appropriate to bring these thoughts up on the current thread because going through previous arguments has been already too lengthily.
I come away thinking that Bob knows a lot about bullets from the perspective of a hunter, but he is not top notch when it comes to critical thinking and doesn’t know anymore about ballistics in a scientific sense than any of the rest of us. In fact I think I understand ballistics very much more than he.

Be that as it may, I am disappointed he has stirred mud into the waters of the discussion again.
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Photon – April 4, 2015 at 4:28 pm:
“Part of the problem with interpreting Dr. Shaw’s testimony for the HSCA is that we have no record of it. What we have are the paraphrased comments of the interviewer, Dr. Petty. It is curious that Dr. Petty mentioned that Many of Dr. Shaw’s answers were somewhat ” stereotype(d)”- due to frequent interviews on the subject. After 14 years the 1.5 cm wound dimension became part of his memory, probably because his Warren testimony was quoted back to him when ever he was interviewed.At any rate, there is no actual record of his interview and as such we have no idea if this wound issue was ever dealt with more than a brief mention. But of course the “stereotype” comment should bring up questions about the accuracy of the interview-despite Dr. Petty’s excellent reputation.
My personal opinion is that in his Warren testimony Dr. Shaw took strides to explain as easily as possible to layman what the medical findings were. He tried to use terminology that the lawyers on the committee could understand without being confused. At that time few outside of the medical and scientific communities knew or used the metric system. Probably nobody on the committee knew exactly how large a centimeter was, or probably even how to pronounce it. As such, I believe it was Dr. Shaw’s intention to describe the wound in inches, but in the stress of the interview forgot to use the term. 3 cm is approximately 1.5 inches ( actually 1.2, but close enough for the approximation description that Dr Shaw was trying to make.). Unfortunately nobody during the interview called him on it, nor requested any clarification. Had they this entire issue may have been cleared up, instead of being a factoid floating without independent confirmation.”http://jfkfacts.org/assassination/millicent-cantors-response-to-jean-davison/#comment-743256
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“Probably nobody on the committee knew exactly how large a centimeter was, or probably even how to pronounce it.” ~Photon

Seriously Photon? Or is your latest comment a form of written glossolalia?
Going to these drastic lengths in grasping at straws to rebuke the clear public record is extraordinary even for you.

The comment above by Photon is perhaps one of the most blatantly absurd propositions I have read yet of one of these Warren Commission cultists.

“Is he serious? Is he sane? Papa ooh mau mau is all he’s sayin’!”~50’s pop song
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HOW FIVE INVESTIGATIONS INTO JFK’S MEDICAL/AUTOPSY EVIDENCE GOT IT WRONG
Gary L. Aguilar, MD and Kathy Cunningham – May 2003The official White House death certificate, signed by Kennedy’s physician Admiral George Burkley, placed the back wound at “about the level of the third thoracic vertebra.” This document was not included by the Warren Commission in its tens of thousands of pages of published exhibits.
(see ARRB MD #6, p. 2)
“Boswell’s hand-written notes and diagram from the night of the autopsy, his so-called “face sheet,” are the only physician-prepared medical records that survived Kennedy’s autopsy. A single sheet, it has organ weights and both sides of a standing human figure on one side of the page. On the back of the page there is a free-hand diagram of the top of JFK’s skull. In the center of this skull diagram, one reads the notations “17” and “missing,” with an arrow pointing front-to-back. Also, one easily makes out the figure “10,” next to an arrow pointing right-to-left.” (17 cm = 6.692913 inches)
. . . . . .This fact in itself should raise the hackles of suspicion! The ONLY surviving document from the actual autopsy, it is outrageous.~wwhttp://www.history-matters.com/essays/jfkmed/How5Investigations/How5InvestigationsGotItWrong_6.htm
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“In discussing the media’s reaction to Oliver Stone’s movie, JFK, Sam Smith commented that, “It is one of contemporary journalism’s most disastrous conceits that truth can not exist in the absence of revealed evidence. By accepting the tyranny of the known, the media inevitably relies on the official version of the truth, seldom asking the government to prove its case, while demanding of critics of that official version the most exacting tests of evidence.”[382] (emphasis in original) Nowhere is this phenomenon more visible than in Kennedy’s medical/autopsy evidence. The original, official findings are accepted without serious scrutiny, as if the government was institutionally incapable of anything but impartiality. Challenges, by contrast, are run through the most withering gauntlet, perhaps for the obvious reason that it is the government that sits in judgment of the merits of the challenge.

Asking any organization to investigate itself is always a chancy endeavor. It is difficult to prevent the ‘introspectors’ from reflecting their own interests. So it is scarcely a surprise to see the pro-government inclinations of the examiners the government has commissioned to reinvestigate John F. Kennedy’s death – from the Justice Department in the mid 1960s to the House Select Committee in the late 1970s. Ironically, the House Select Committee’s criticism – “It is a reality to be regretted that the [Warren] Commission failed to live up to its promise”[383] – applies just as much to the Select Committee as it does to the Warren Commission. And just as much to the Rockefeller Commission, the Clark Panel and the Justice Department. It is a regrettable reality that none of these groups lived up to the promise.
[…]
Had JFK’s death been a simple matter of a sole, deranged act by a disgruntled loner, how likely is it that so much inconvenient evidence would have been suppressed or ignored? Evidence such as signed false affidavits arranged by the Justice Department that just happen to endorse the Justice Department’s preferred conclusions? Such as overwhelming witness testimony at odds with the “hard” photographic evidence, key portions of which all the relevant witnesses insist are missing? Such as selectively suppressed, and exculpatory, medical and autopsy evidence whose disclosure might have forced a new, official theory of the President’s death, had sanctioned experts been but allowed to see it? Such as key witnesses – like Burkley – being brushed aside?

The proven mishandling of evidence, and the discovery of so much suppressed and contrary evidence, has increased the already heavy burden of proof on the proponents of the Oswald solution to the assassination. That, intriguingly, is what the record now shows. Despite the estimable credentials of previous expert examiners, the full record has never been expertly examined with any great vigor or skepticism. Any one of the previous panels might easily have begun to unravel this medical conundrum, had a freewheeling and unhindered probe ever been officially sanctioned. But it never has been. And so what we are left with is a suspiciously inadequate Autopsy of the Century that has repeatedly undergone an inadequate post mortem of its own.” ~Gary L. Aguilar, MD
. . . . .
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Darrell Tomlinson found a lead colored, sharp nosed hunting round at about 1:45 PM, and brought it to chief of security O. P. Wright at Parkland Hospital. Wright is very familiar with firearms since he was with the sheriff’s office previously. Wright gets a good look at the bullet, he notes it as a lead colored, pointed nosed, hunting round.
This bullet will be passed through to Secret Service officers Richard Johnsen and Jim Rowley. Yet neither of them will initial the bullet. And later, neither positively identified it.
At the White House, Rowley turns a bullet over to FBI agent Elmer Todd. They sign a receipt. The time of the transfer is 8:50 PM on the 22nd.
Yet as John Hunt shows, agent Robert Frazier at the FBI lab enters the stretcher bullet’s arrival into his notes at 7:30! As Hunt notes, if Frazier and Todd can both tell time, something is really wrong here. Frazier has received a bullet that Todd has not given him yet.
But it’s even worse. For in an FBI document it says that Todd’s initials are on the bullet. (CE 2011, at WC Vol. 24, p. 412) Yet as Hunt has amply demonstrated, they are not there. (Hunt, “Phantom Identification of the Magic Bullet”) In other words, no one who carried this bullet in transit for law enforcement purposes–Johnsen, Rowley, Todd–put their initials on it. When that is what they are trained to do.
When it comes time to write the Warren Report, Wright’s name is not in it. And there is no evidence Arlen Specter interviewed him. In late 1966, we find out why Specter avoided him. Thompson interviews him and he rejects CE 399 as the bullet he gave Johnsen. Twice. (Thompson, p.175)http://www.ctka.net/2010/journeyCE399.html

QUESTION-
Where was the entrance wound?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
There was an entrance wound in the neck. As regards the one on the head, I cannot say.
QUESTION-
Which way was the bullet coming on the neck wound? At him?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
It appeared to be coming at him.
QUESTION-
And the one behind?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
The nature of the wound defies the ability to describe whether it went through it from either side. I cannot tell you that. Can you, Dr. Clark?
DR. KEMP CLARK-
The head wound could have been either the exit wound from the neck or it could have been a tangential wound, as it was simply a large, gaping loss of tissue.
QUESTION-
That was the immediate cause of death — the head wound?
DR. KEMP CLARK-
I assume so, yes.http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/press.htm
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Mr. SPECTER. Now looking at that bullet, Exhibit 399, Doctor Humes, could that bullet have gone through or been any part of the fragment passing through President Kennedy’s head in Exhibit No. 388?
Commander HUMES. I do not believe so, sir.

Mr. SPECTER. And could that missile have made the wound on Governor Connally’s right wrist?

Commander HUMES. I think that that is most unlikely … The reason I believe it most unlikely that this missile could have inflicted either of these wounds is that this missile is basically intact; its jacket appears to me to be intact, and I do not understand how it could possibly have left fragments in either of these locations.

Mr. SPECTER. Dr. Humes, under your opinion which you have just given us, what effect, if any, would that have on whether this bullet, 399, could have been the one to lodge in Governor Connally’s thigh?

Commander HUMES. I think that extremely unlikely. The reports, again Exhibit 392 from Parkland, tell of an entrance wound on the lower midthigh of the Governor, and X-rays taken there are described as showing metallic fragments in the bone, which apparently by this report were not removed and are still present in Governor Connally’s thigh. I can’t conceive of where they came from this missile.

Representative FORD. The missile identified as Exhibit 399.

Commander HUMES. 399, sir.
. . . . . . . . . .
Mr. SPECTER. And could it [CE 399] have been the bullet which inflicted the wound on Governor Connally’s right wrist?
Colonel FINCK. No; for the reason that there are too many fragments described in that wrist.
. . . . . . . . . .
Mr. SPECTER. Mr. Frazier, is it possible for the fragments identified in Commission Exhibit 840 to have come from the whole bullet heretofore identified as Commission Exhibit 399?

Mr. FRAZIER. I would say that based on weight it would be highly improbable that that much weight could have come from the base of that bullet since its present weight is–its weight when I first received it was 158.6 grains.

Mr. SPECTER. Referring now to 399.

Mr. FRAZIER. Exhibit 399, and its original normal weight would be 160 to 161 grains, and those three metal fragments had a total of 2.1 grains as I recall–2.3 grains. So it is possible but not likely since there is only a very small part of the core of the bullet 399 missing.
. . . . . . . . . .
Mr. SPECTER: What is your opinion as to whether bullet 399 could have inflicted all of the wounds on the Governor, then, without respect at this point to the wound of the President’s neck?
Dr. SHAW. I feel that there would be some difficulty in explaining all of the wounds as being inflicted by bullet Exhibit 399 without causing more in the way of loss of substance to the bullet or deformation of the bullet. (Discussion off the record.)

Dr. Shaw’s testimony is interrupted at this point, and “off the record” discussions take place. Later…

Dr. SHAW: All right. As far as the wounds of the chest are concerned, I feel that this bullet could have inflicted those wounds. But the examination of the wrist both by X-ray and at the time of surgery showed some fragments of metal that make it difficult to believe that the same missle could have caused these two wounds. There seems to be more that three grains of metal missing as far as the–I mean in the wrist.
Mr. SPECTOR: Does that bullet appear to you to have any of its metal flaked off?

Dr. SHAW: I have been told that the one point on the nose of this bullet that is deformed was cut off for purposes of examination. With that information, I would have to say that this bullet has lost literally none of its substance.

Dr. SHAW: All right. As far as the wounds of the chest are concerned, I feel that this bullet could have inflicted those wounds. But the examination of the wrist both by X-ray and at the time of surgery showed some fragments of metal that make it difficult to believe that the same missile could have caused these two wounds. There seems to be more that three grains of metal missing as far as the – I mean in the wrist.
[…]
Mr. SPECTOR: So, would you say in net that there may have been some tumbling occasioned by it having passed trough another body or perhaps might have been occasioned by the angle of entry.

From the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA),
Dr. WECHT: Commission exhibit 399…a side view…shows the copper jacket to be completely intact, unscathed with no deformity, mutilation or markings…
The small defect at the tip is where a piece of metal was properly taken by the FBI for spectographic analysis…

…the nose, the penetrating portion of the missile which is completely unmarked and without any scathing at all…

…the base of the bullet which is the only area of deformity, what I would refer to as some flattening with indentation of the metallic rim and focal extrusion of the inner lead core. That is the only deformity.

HSCA/JFK Exhibit F-294
Dr. WECHT: This exhibit, F-294, is a composite photo that I believe clearly, dramatically and most succinctly demonstrates the absurdity, the scientific untenability of the single bullet theory. This is Commission exhibit 399. I will not engage in semantical quibbling with my friend and collegue, Dr. Baden, whether you can be near pristine or fully pristine. It is a near pristine bullet, again, with the only deformity being demonstrated at the base…
Mr. PURDY: Dr. Wecht, is it your opinion that no bullet could have caused all of the wounds to President Kennedy and Governor Connally or the Commission exhibit 399 could not have caused all of the wounds to both men?

Dr. WECHT: Based upon the findings in this case, it is my opinion that no bullet could have caused all these wounds, not only 399 but no other bullet that we know about or any fragment of any bullet that we know about in this case.
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I am curious to hear what types of songs our resident mockingbirds are going to sing when it comes to the issue of the broken chain of evidence of their Magic Bullet. They have been flitting through the treetops chirping about everything and anything else so far.
Can they out bop the buzzard and the oriole?
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The Warren Commission critics have proven that there are breaks in the chain of custody for CE399, but conversely and more importantly the Warren Commission did not prove an unbroken chain of custody. Again I will reiterate that in long standing US jurisprudence, the onus of proof is on the party making the assertion, and not vise versa. The Magic Bullet does not pass the test of lawful legitimacy.
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All of the opinions offered on the topic of CD933 fall under one of the three categories of conjecture, or their antithesis.

The one point in all of this conversation that is not conjecture, but is lawful fact, is that under historical US jurisprudence, an assertion must be proven by those posing such an assertion and not vise versa.
The break in the chain of custody of the Magic Bullet is proven, and conversely the chain of custody of this bullet is unproven.

Kennedy Throat Shot
Frame Z-205, Kennedy reacts to the shot to the throat just as he is going out of view behind the sign, you can see his right hand go to his throat. Both Connally and Jackie are turning to look at JFK at that moment as well. As they reemerge from behind that sign he has both hands to his throat.
Also just before this frame, there is the telltale jiggle of Zapruder reacting to the rifle shot.
At frame 223 as Connally first appears from behind the sign he is sitting straight up showing no sign of stress whatsoever.
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What is your level of legal expertise Photon?
More importantly what is your real level of critical thinking abilities?

I will state that argument clearly for the last time Photon; the onus of proof is not on those who criticize the assertion, the onus is in fact on those who make the assertion. This is the foundation of western jurisprudence. One need not have any particular expertise in the law to recognize this simple concept.

I will add, I do not speak to this matter as though it is a court of law, I speak to it as a matter of common and rational sense, which is after all the foundation of reason in both debate, reason in law, and reason in medicine.

The bottom line fact of the matter is you have not proven your case to the standards of reason.
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Yes all Presidents, all heads of state are chosen to act as puppets for the global oligarchy that was firmly established during the industrial revolution. It is standard operating procedure to take out any leaders who start to get the idea that their titular position actually holds the powers officially designated to their office. So from Lincoln to McKinley, to Mossadeq, to Nasser, to Diem, to Kennedy, to Khrushchev, to Noriega, to Qaddafi… it goes on and on. And so do the cover stories, or “official narratives” of the Public Relations Regime.

We may of course seek and find precedents going back into the mists of history, and there are many.

Of course the naïve and regimented mind will interpret this as “conspiracy theory”, when in fact it is deep systemic analysis of the architecture of political power.
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On November 22, 1963, just after the arrest of Oswald, Dallas law enforcement officials announced that they had found the murder weapon. Wade and his associates studied the rifle. It was shown to the television audience repeatedly as some enforcement official carried it high in the air, with his bare hands on the rifle. After hours of examination Wade said without hesitation that “the murder weapon was a German Mauser.”http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/OI-ALB.html
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Deputy Sheriff Eugene Boone and Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman both initially identified the rifle found in the Texas School Book Depository as a 7.65 Mauser. Weitzman signed an affidavit the following day describing the weapon as a “7.65 Mauser bolt action equipped with a 4/18 scope, a thick leather brownish-black sling on it”. Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig claimed that he saw “7.65 Mauser” stamped on the barrel of the weapon.
Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade told the press that the weapon found in the Book Depository was a 7.65 Mauser, and this was reported by the media.

What was the impetus that led Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman to take it upon himself to have a Notary Public take a signed affidavit of the discovery of a Mauser on the 6th floor of the Texas Book Depository Building?

Is it possible that Weitzman was suspicious of what was going on at the so-called “crime scene”?
_______________________________________________________________________________

[A Notary Public is an official of integrity appointed by state government —typically by the secretary of state — to serve the public as an impartial witness in performing a variety of official fraud-deterrent acts related to the signing of important documents.]
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Pause at 3:10. You can see the whole scope clearly with the boxes in the background. Same scope as seen outside.

I see that scope is the same in this freeze frame, as plain as officer Day…(Lol)
I feel compelled to make a retraction of my argument on the Mauser issue.

“We’ll always have Paris.” That is we still have the broken chain of custody that destroys the Magic Bullet… we have a virtual penumbra of arguments that chop the Warren Report to pieces. But the Mauser issue isn’t one of them in my view.
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It is well-known that the rifle allegedly used as the murder weapon was identified as a 6.5 millimeter caliber, Italian-made, bolt-action, military rifle called a Mannlicher-Carcano, after its two inventors. It is largely unknown that during WWII, it was one of only two military-use rifles in the world that fed a cartridge into the chamber from a clip. The other was the M-1 Garand. The difference between the two is that the clip on the M-1 Garand ejects when the last round is fired, while on the Carcano the clip ejects when the last round is chambered. “In the clip system, the clip remains attached to the rounds on loading and forms an essential part of the magazine system, a follower forcing the rounds out of the clip and presenting them in turn to the bolt for loading.”8

According to the Warren Report, when the weapon allegedly used to kill the President was found on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD), one cartridge remained, and it was in the chamber.9 Therefore, if operating properly, the rifle had automatically ejected the clip. The Warren Commission reported, however, that when the rifle was found, it contained a clip.10 Firearms experts for the HSCA explained the discrepancy. On September 8, 1978, Monty C. Lutz of the Committee’s firearms panel, was asked about this by Pennsylvania Representative Robert W. Edgar.

Mr. Edgar. The cartridge clip was removed from CE-139 by Lieutenant Day of the Dallas Police Department on November 22, 1963 at the crime laboratory for the police department. Shouldn’t a clip automatically fall out once the last cartridge has fed into the chamber?
Mr. Lutz. This rifle is designed to incorporate that feature so that the last cartridge is stripped out of the clip, then that allows the clip itself to fall or to drop from the opening that you see in the bottom of the box magazine. However, in many cases, and in this particular case, where we functioned the rifle, fed cartridges through it, we found this clip to stay in the rifle after the last round had been stripped and fed into the chamber. Because the lips or the edges of the clip many times will open up, they will spring against the walls on the inside of the box magazine and it will hang up in that areaa [sic], and even though it is supposed to drop out, many times it will hang up in the box area.11

That explanation seems reasonable enough. But it is not. It is true that the clip must be deformed to have any chance of getting as stuck as this one. But once bent, it stays bent. Commission Exhibits (CEs) 574 and 575 are photographs of the alleged clip in its normal, unbent condition. And five years after the HSCA reported the clip deformed, Life magazine photographer Michael O’Neill photographed it in normal condition for Life’s November 1983 issue.12

According to assassination researcher and author J.W. Hughes, who has tested this deformation over fifty times on each of his seven Mannlicher-Carcanos, “When deformed, it will not hold the rounds because the locking ridge is spread too wide to hold the round and the weapon jams.”13 The Warren Commission was apparently silent about whether expert riflemen from the U.S. Army and FBI had such difficulty firing the alleged murder weapon in 1964, and whether it was fired with its alleged clip. Whether or not those marksmen used the original clip, they were required to use any test clip in the original’s apparent “found” condition, i.e., deformed. Anyone could have tested the clip by duplicating its required abnormal behavior, and can still. But CBS News, which claimed to “duplicate the conditions of the actual assassination” in its filmed rifle test in 1967, did not. According to reporter Dan Rather, “Eleven volunteer marksmen took turns firing clips of three bullets each at the moving target.” They fired a total of thirty-seven three-round series, seventeen of which resulted in unfired bullets due to “trouble with the rifle.” Clip problems or not, all data from those seventeen troubled series was disregarded by CBS analysts. It was the other series of shots, however, with properly emptied and ejected clips, deemed worthy of analysis by CBS, that should have been disqualified. In the CBS film, clips can be seen flying out of the gun so fast as to be a blur.14 If a test clip is not bent, or ejects, or moves at all, Oswald’s alleged feat is not duplicated, invalidating the test. The HSCA firearms panel seemed not to be interested in this phenomenon, since it did not test the clip under firing conditions. Congressman Edgar learned about the defect from Mr. Lutz when he asked for details about their firing test:

Mr. Lutz. This was a single cartridge being inserted into the chamber and firing into a cotton waste recovery box…backing away from the box, a foot or two, and pointing the muzzle into the box and then firing into it, in order to recover the projectile.
Mr. Edgar. But you weren’t firing with clip — using the clip, were you?

Mr. Lutz. No sir; I did not.

Mr. Edgar. Did anyone on the panel fire with the clip in?

Mr. Lutz. I do not believe so; no, sir.

Mr. Edgar. What was the reason for that?

Mr. Lutz. There were no particular markings that we were able to identify as having come from the clip, nor were we checking for time firing or sequential firing in any way in that respect.15

Under the heading “Findings and Conclusions of the Firearms Panel Concerning the Kennedy Assassination,” we learn that, “Two bullets were test-fired into a horizontal water recovery tank. Further tests were conducted by loading four cartridges into the CE 375 [sic] cartridge clip and inserting it into the magazine of the rifle. The cartridges were worked through the rifle’s mechanism and ejected without being fired. When the last cartridge was chambered, the cartridge clip remained in the magazine instead of falling out as it is designed to do.”16 Given Mr. Lutz’s “the clip many times will open up” statement, this result demands further explanation.

“Many times will” also means “many times won’t.” Metal expands when heated and can alter its shape. But during the HSCA tests of the loading mechanism, the rifle should have been cool. In addition, CE 541 (3), a photograph of the clip stuck in the magazine reproduced on page 83 of the Warren Report, shows it in a cool rifle. Surely the rifle had not been fired for some time before that photography session. Is Lutz suggesting that the clip’s sides spring out when cool and then return to a normal shape in the heat of firing? If such a violation of the laws of physics occurs with this rifle and clip, how then could the rifle have “contained a clip” when found?http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/19th_Issue/gtds.html
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Also, the HSCA’s explanation does not explain what happened after the rifle was found. Over at least the next twenty-four hours, the Dallas Police Department reported, and left uncorrected, descriptions that remain a paradox to this day. Early news reports seemed to identify the murder weapon as anything but a 6.5 mm. Mannlicher-Carcano. NBC and WBAP radio identified it as a British Enfield .303. KLIF radio said it was a 7.65 German Mauser. KRLD radio announced that the rifle was “presumed to be a .25 caliber high powered Army or Japanese rifle.” Radio station KBOX reported a German Mauser or a Japanese rifle. Dallas television station WFAA described it as three different kinds of Mauser: a “German Mauser,” a 6.5 “Argentine Mauser” with a four-power scope, and a 7.65 “Mauser.” Dallas NBC-affiliate television station WBAP’s continuous coverage between 12:56 p.m. and 5:26 p.m. Central Standard Time (C.S.T.) reveals that the “conflicting reports” of the rifle’s make evolved from the first (British .303) to the last (7.65 Mauser) in a very short time frame between 2:14 and 2:24.17

Despite the fact that the alleged murder weapon that allegedly belonged to Oswald reportedly was clearly stamped “Made Italy” and “Cal. 6.5,” local authorities and the media seemed to finally agree that it was a 7.65 German-made Mauser. Had as few as two different descriptions continued to dominate news reports the rest of the day, one of them being an Italian, or a clip-fed weapon, an argument could be made for confusion. But that is not what happened. The supposed murder weapon was not “called…most everything,” as Captain Will Fritz testified.18 Initial descriptions quickly gave way to a short-lived consensus for a 7.65 German Mauser, not further confusion. Probably due to the earlier conflicting reports, reporters remained skeptical. But they asked if it was a Mauser, and were told, tacitly at least, that it was. As different as these early descriptions seemed from each other and from the weapon the Warren Commission finally chose, there is one difference they all have in common. It is the one difference from the Mannlicher-Carcano they all share. It is the key to the conspiracy. None of them can use an ammunition clip.

The early critics of the Warren Commission who dealt directly with the rifle descriptions and clip problems, including Mark Lane, Harold Weisberg and Sylvia Meagher, missed this particular paradox. Since the mid-seventies, most of the clip and rifle problems have been recognized by gun experts and many researchers, including Gary Shaw, Mary Ferrell, Jack White and George Michael Evica. But the fact that there is only one other clip system with which the Mannlicher-Carcano’s can be confused (the significance of which is explained below), and the absolute impossibility of confusing a Mannlicher-Carcano for any rifle but that one, seem to have been completely overlooked.

In the case of Meagher, it was a near miss. She was aware of a lack of direct evidence that a clip was found at the crime scene. The Texas Department of Public Safety official “Evidence Sheet” lists the incriminating evidence against Lee Harvey Oswald in detail. The number of spent shells found at the crime scene even changed from “(2)” to an obviously distorted “(3)” by the time the Warren Commission published the list, but no clip was ever accounted for.http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/19th_Issue/gtds.html
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We need constant reminders that this mail order rifle has extreme logistical problems as to actually getting into Oswald’s possession. He was clearly on the time clock at his job when he is supposed to have mailed that coupon in; from a post office too far to walk to and back from. His check was never cashed. There are no original physical records of the transactions in existence. Just a few examples.
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The testimony of Darrell C. Tomlinson was taken on March 20, 1964, at Parkland Memorial Hospital, Dallas, Tex., by Mr. Arlen Specter, assistant counsel of the President’s Commission.

Not once during this questioning did Mr Specter ask Tomlinson to describe the bullet he found on the stretcher, nor did he show Tomlinson a photograph of a bullet to identify.http://www.jfklancer.com/docs.maps/tomlinson.html
. . . . . . . . . . . .
O.P. Wright was not called to testify before the Warren Commission.
. . . . . .. . . . . .
A suppressed memo from the FBI reveals that not only could neither Darrell Tomlinson nor O.P. Wright, the Parkland Hospital employees who found the bullet, identify the one currently in evidence as the one they found. Neither could Secret Service agent Richard Johnsen or the chief of the Secret Service, James Rowley, the next two men in the bullet’s chain of possession.http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/COPA1998Aguilar.html
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Recap:
Deputy Sheriff Eugene Boone and Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman both initially identified the rifle found in the Texas School Book Depository as a 7.65 Mauser. Weitzman signed an affidavit the following day describing the weapon as a “7.65 Mauser bolt action equipped with a 4/18 scope, a thick leather brownish-black sling on it”. Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig claimed that he saw “7.65 Mauser” stamped on the barrel of the weapon.

Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade told the press that the weapon found in the Book Depository was a 7.65 Mauser, and this was reported by the media. But investigators later identified the rifle as a 6.5 Italian Mannlicher Carcano.

According to Mark Lane:”The strongest element in the case against Lee Harvey Oswald was the Warren Commission’s conclusion that his rifle had been found on the 6th floor of the Book Depository building. Yet Oswald never owned a 7.65 Mauser. When the FBI later reported that Oswald had purchased only a 6.5 Italian Mannlicher-Carcano, the weapon at police headquarters in Dallas miraculously changed its size, its make and its nationality. The Warren Commission concluded that a 6.5 Mannlicher-Carcano, not a 7.65 German Mauser, had been discovered by the Dallas deputies.”

The terms “clip” and “magazine” are used interchangeably, when, in fact, they refer to two different things. Day was not talking about a clip. The clip holds the cartridges. The magazine is an integral part of the rifle which, in this instance, holds both the cartridges and the clip. The clip goes into the magazine.
. . . . .
This is rather the same sorts of shenanigans we find in the official narrative concerning the Magic Bullet.
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“Likewise, the work of Lattimer and Fackler is simply a very sound, complete, and careful examination and reconstruction of that facts that should be the standard in all cases, but isn’t.
[…]
Some argument can be made in the typical investigation that the talent and resources just are not available to meet a first class standard, but one can hardly argue that this situation is applicable to the Warren report. The Warren commission should have used all of the best talent available to make the most complete analysis possible, but they didn’t.”~Duncan MacPhersonhttp://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/macpher.htm
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“We don’t have any proof that Oswald fired the rifle, and never did.
Nobody’s yet been able to put him in that building with a gun in his hand.”~Jesse Curry
retired police chief of Dallas, Texas, “JFK Assassination File.”
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“This man in Dallas. We, of course, charged him with the murder of the President. The evidence that they have at the present time is not very, very strong. … The case as it stands now isn’t strong enough to be able to get a conviction.”
(Johnson to Hoover, White House Telephone Transcripts, 23 November 1963, LBJ Library, Austin, Texas)
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“The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that the evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial. … We need something to head off public speculation or Congressional hearings of the wrong sort.”
(FBI HQ JFK Assassination File, 62–109060–18)

The priority in Washington was the preservation of public trust in political institutions. Finding out who had actually killed President Kennedy was very much a secondary consideration. President Johnson set up the Warren Commission on 29 November, by which time the Commission’s conclusion was already in place: Oswald alone was guilty.
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A Lawyer’s Notes on the Warren Commission Report*
Alfredda Scobey
[Editor’s note: Ms. Scobey, who was a member of the staff of the President’s
Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, reviews
the testimony amassed by the Commission from the standpoint of the lawyer
who might undertake the defense of Lee Harvey Oswald, had he lived.
In spite of her effusive prologue and epilogue, many of her assertions of
findings represent false claims from The Warren Report, and what she
discovers establishes a prima facie case that the alleged assassin could
never have been convicted in a court of law.]

TO
Secretary of State
Secretary of Defense
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
SUBJECT
South Vietnam
At a meeting on October 5, 1963,2 the President considered the recommendations contained in the report of Secretary McNamara and General Taylor on their mission to South Vietnam.

The President approved the military recommendations contained in Section I B (1-3) of the report, but directed that no formal announcement be made of the implementation of plans to withdraw 1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963.

After discussion of the remaining recommendations of the report, the President approved an instruction to Ambassador Lodge which is set forth in State Department telegram No. 534 to Saigon.3

Historical documents:
FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES, 1961–1963, VOLUME IV, VIETNAM, AUGUST–DECEMBER 1963
III. The Coup Against the Diem Government, October 23-November 2, 1963: Differing Interpretations of U.S. Policy Toward Coup Plotting, Efforts To Obtain Information on a Potential Coup, Lodge-Diem Discussions, U.S. Assessments of a Coup, The Coup, The Deaths of Nhu and Diemhttps://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/ch3
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I will assume that both Mr Prudhomme and Mr Kornbluth are sincere in their attempts to make sense of the bullet trajectories and types of ammunition used. I have no problem with their continuing to argue their various theories.

However for myself, I come to the conclusion that the proven breaks in the chains of evidence make such theorizing moot. I am as tired of those carousels as I am of Photon and Jean’s continuing looping and spinning.

In “The Kennedy Detail,” Blaine quotes a number Secret Service agents who witnessed JFK’s assassination from the follow-up car. All said that the president and Texas Governor John Connally were hit in the back by two different gun shots. This testimony buttresses the recollections of Connally and his wife who said the same thing.

“I believe that there is no country in the world including any and all the countries under colonial domination, where economic colonization, humiliation and exploitation were worse than in Cuba, in part owing to my country’s policies during the Batista regime…. I will even go further: to some extent it is as though Batista was the incarnation of a number of sins on the part of the United States. Now we shall have to pay for those sins. In the matter of the Batista regime, I am in agreement with the first Cuban revolutionaries.” ~John F. Kennedy, October 24, 1963

Tom Rossley. “What ever happened to the 400 feet of film I took of the TSBD Search?”

Good question. Nobody has ever asked me this before.

I had filmed the search to the roof on 200 ft. of film. I took several shot from this location. The shots I took of the Sniper’s Nest were recorded on the second reel. Capt. Fritz decided to have a conference with the Search Team about a continued search for the “ Sniper” by searching the floors again, back down. The suggestion was submitted about obtaining some Flashlights to aid us in seeing into the dark areas. The nearest source was at the Sheriff’s Office a block away. Two men were dispatched to The Sheriff’s Office to obtain them, and Capt. Fritz said he and the group would wait on the roof until they returned. I thought this would be a good time for me to get my footage to one of our reporters waiting outside. I took the elevator down with the officers. They had badges, and were allowed to exit the building, but I stepped to the porch and gave my footage to WFAA-TV reporter Art Sinclair, who raced this first 200 ft. to the newsroom. The world saw the sniper’s nest for the first time. It was all silent film, with no copy attached. I turned and went back onto the building with no challenge from the guards. I rejoined Capt Fritz and the search group again on the roof. Capt Fritz became impatient waiting on the flashlights and led us to the 7th floor and 6th to start our downward search. Within a few minutes the flashlights arrived and were distributed to some of the officers. Within minutes, one of the officers spotted about four inches of the end of the rifle stock. The officer was on the North side of a small circular enclosure of book cartons, but the Rifle was hidden on the inside. The Rifle could be seen only by looking over the North side, over the overhanging boxes. I took a shot of the officer who found the Rifle as he singled to Capt. Fritz. When Fritz saw it, he stopped the search and directed one of the officers to go below and call the Crime Lab. It took Lt. Day and Officer Studebaker from 12 to 15 minutes to arrive. During this wait, we were informed that the President was dead. Finally the two Crime Lab men stepped from the elevator, just 20 ft. from where we had gathered at the Rifle Site. I had filmed the partial vision of the Rifle within seconds after it was found. I still have this footage. I also filmed the questionable activities of Lt. Day and Studebaker in their efforts to record this evidence. I still have this footage. When Lt. Day started dusting the Rifle, Capt. Fritz reached into the pocket and retrieved the three shell casing he had taken from the Sniper’s Nest and handed them to Studebaker, with the instruction to include them in his photos he would be taking of the Shooting Site at the Southeast window, while Lt. Day dusted the Rifle where it was found. We all watched Lt. Day dust the Rifle as I filmed it. I still have photos of this. Studebaker was alone at the Shooting Site. He had not seen the original location of the casings, so he tossed them on the floor, and this is the photo that is recorded for history.

I was not able to cover both activities. Footage containing the finding of the Rifle, Photographing it, Dusting it, Fritz ejecting round #4, Fritz and Ly. Day examining the dusted rifle, etc, consumed most of my 3rd reel. Fritz handed the Rifle back to Lt. Day and told him to take it directly to his office at Police Headquarters. When Capt. Fritz and a few officers decided to leave, Capt. Fritz was waiting for the elevator, just a few feet from the Rifle Crime Scene. When the elevator arrived, Mgr. Truly stepped out and give Fritz the information about Oswald not returning from lunch and could be a suspect. Unknown to researchers, Fritz did not go directly to his office. The two detectives accompanying Fritz reported that the Captain ordered his driver to go the Sheriff’s Office. The officers reported that Fritz talked to Sheriff Bill Decker for about 15 minutes before he got back into the car and resumed his trip back to Police Headquarters. The officers stated that they stayed in the car during the time Fritz visited with the Sheriff. They did not relate the content of the conversation.

NOTE: Lt. Day never saw the Snipers Nest until he returned with Studebaker about 3:30 to shoot more photos and look for additional evidence. But when he arrived on the 6th floor, he found he was surrounded by the press who had been escorted to the 6th floor by the police to record the crime scenes. I have photos of him aiding the press in the location of the Rifle Crime Scene. However in his testimony he reported that the Press had entered the 6th floor Saturday and disrupted much of the evidence. The Press was soon asked to leave. This was the only time the Press was in the building. To my knowledge, the 6th floor was empty Saturday and Sunday.

After Lt. Day left with the Rifle, I filmed several scenes of activity by the Police, including Studebaker dusting the Dr. Pepper bottle. Shortly after 2:30, I left the floor to get my footage to the station and televised. I had no police badge and wasn’t allowed to leave.
I taped reel #3 and #4 together, and was able to toss it to News Editor, A. J. L’Hoste who was standing near the door. He raced it to the News Room where it was processed and a few minutes later it was shown to the world. The Rifle was seen for the first time, plus scenes of Lt. Day dusting it where it was found. However, years later, when I had an opportunity to watch a re-run of these news shots, I didn’t see much of the activity that was involved in processing the bits of information regarding this important find.

I was still in the building when my footage was televised. I had no idea what was used in WFAA-TV’s televised news report. It was weeks later that I learned how little of my footage was used. I have learned since, many more disturbing facts. I have listed them in my Report, but they are too lengthy to list here.

To answer your question, let me list the following facts:
1). I don’t know for certain, who edited my film that was televised while I was still in the TSBD. Some of the footage was used in the make-up of a News Reel, and televised. The same reel was sent to ABC in New York. It is my understanding that the FBI acquired a copy of the same small bit of News Footage that hit the air.

2). Saturday, Nov. 23, 1963 I was concerned about the discarded film on the editing room floor. I checked it, and found much of my footage had been discarded along with footage from other newsmen. I asked the News Director to save it; he said we didn’t have time. I located some empty reels and searched the 4-inch pile of footage. When I found a strip of film I had shot, I spun it onto an empty reel, and crammed it in my pocket. I didn’t have time to locate all of my discarded footage before the custodian returned and filled the trash container with the remaining footage from the floor. I grabbed my camera and recorded it. It can be seen in my report. The footage I have is a collection of filmstrips I salvaged from the Editing Room floor.

3). Many key scenes went out the door in a trash barrel, such as the long film strip of the Sniper’s Nest, the Shooting Support boxes, the Casings on the floor, and Capt. Fritz holding the three casings in his hand. I have wondered these many years if this was deliberate, or an accident or bad editing; but it does not interest the modern researcher, nor do the many other facts that are unknown.

Willy Whitten
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
April 13, 2015 at 3:15 pm
I would like to point out that this idea of the FED being at the heart of the darkness in US policy is hardly limited to the views of Ron Paul. This debate goes all the way back historically to the debates between Thomas Jefferson and James Hamilton on the propriety and constitutionality of a central bank.

This debate began at the beginning of the constitutional republic.

The conspiracy at Jekyll Island in 1910, seems to be part of the hidden history that most Americans remain ignorant of. It appears that it is much too late to resolve now that the US has become simply the garrison state of the Global Empire of the Central Banking Elites.

That Kennedy the intellectual that he was, grasped this issue is hard to rationally deny. That he made the effort to circumvent the FED is public record. That this could be part of the consensus of the elites running the military industrial complex that threw their lots behind a coup d’etat is in no way an unreasonable conclusion to come to.
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As trial jurors are reminded daily, evidence tampering can be inferred from an absence of evidence which is reasonably expected to exist, and, conversely, from the existence of evidence which is reasonably expected to be absent. Inference is the essence of circumstantial evidence, one of three major classifications of evidence. The other two major classifications are direct evidence and real evidence. The essence of direct evidence is that it directly establishes a main fact or element of the crime. It may be an actual object or an immediate experience on the part of a witness. Items of real evidence, the focus of our discussion here, are tangible objects which prove or disprove the facts at issue. Real evidence is self-explanatory. It may be either direct (e.g., an actual gun seen and collected) or circumstantial (e.g., a gun not seen or collected but inferred from established facts such as its visual and auditory effects). But real evidence needs only to be identified in court, not explained. Fingerprints and blood stains are other examples of real evidence. The most important real evidence is corpus delicti evidence. It consists of objects and substances which are an essential part of the body of a crime, such as a gun used to commit a murder. Investigators at a crime scene are therefore chiefly responsible for the discovery and preservation of corpus delicti evidence.

Those rules of evidence are among the most basic concepts used in criminal investigation. Like the basic procedures described below, they were known and used around the world at the time of Kennedy’s assassination. They were studied worldwide in textbooks. One of those books, by criminologist and educator Charles E. O’Hara, Fundamentals of Criminal Investigation, first published in 1956, was in its third printing with 14,000 copies by 1963. Prescribed fundamentals like those in textbooks like O’Hara’s were known to Dallas Police Lieutenant John Carl Day. On the day of the assassination, Day was fifty years old, had twenty-three years of experience with the Dallas Police Department, and had been the immediate supervisor of the crime-scene search section of its identification bureau for seven years.26

Despite those long established, most important, most fundamental procedures used throughout the world in searches of the most important of all crime-scenes — those where murders occurred — on November 22nd, 1963, extremely unorthodox methods and extreme neglect by experienced investigators apparently prevailed during the search of the crime scene of the murder of the President of the United States.http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/19th_Issue/gtds.html

Curry retired from the Dallas Police Department in 1966 on the advice of his doctor due to health issues. In 1969, he wrote a book on the subject of JFK’s assassination entitled, Retired Dallas Police Chief, Jesse Curry Reveals His Personal JFK Assassination File.[2][7] On November 5, 1969, Curry held a press conference to announce the release of his book said to contain his “personal file” of the assassination.[8] During the interview, Curry expressed his doubts about the Warren Commission’s single bullet theory and their finding of a lone assassin.[8] Curry stated: “I’m not sure about it. No one has ever been able to put him (Oswald) in the Texas School Book Depository with a rifle in his hand.”[8] Curry reasoned in another interview: “I think there’s a possibility that one [shot] could have come from in front [of the limousine]. We’ve never, we’ve never been able to prove that, but just in my mind and by the direction of his blood and brain from the president from one of the shots, it would just seem that it would have to been fired from the front rather than behind. I can’t say that I could swear that I believe that it was one man and one man alone. I think there’s a possibility there could have been another man.”[9]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Curry
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The official JFK Assassination narrative is asinine. But you know, there are true believers!!! And they will not accept reason…and it turns into a carousel of bullshit. A redux of the Warren Report. It becomes like a tent revival full of speaking-in-tongues and snake charming. A Kafkaesque burlesque of psychedelia.
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Willy WhittenYour comment is awaiting moderation.
April 15, 2015 at 1:07 am
“However, Mr. Von Pein makes a great argument when he says that a cover-up would have to be so massive in size as to be unmanageable.”
~Steve Sirlen
. . . . .
This is a standard and bogus argument that ignores “compartmentalization”, and “need to know” basis which is applicable to not only military, but law enforcement, and even corporate guidelines.

It should be understood as well that many of the lower tier operators doing menial chores are working by rote, are ofttimes disinterested in their jobs, are barely competent and are simply going along to get along in a boring routine. it would be rare for any such as these to take notice of anything outside of their immediate purview
Then there are those such as Mr Weitzman, who are alert and curious, and can recognize when things are strange that should be standard procedure. A man who can think for himself is most dangerous to corrupt authority.
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Willy WhittenYour comment is awaiting moderation.
April 15, 2015 at 8:32 am
No matter what evidence is produced to support the known fact that John Kennedy was determined to pull the military out of Indochina, there is a contingent of alleged “experts” on ‘military history’ who have some scurrilous argument to apply against it.

We are NOT speaking to the narrow topic of “military history” here, we are speaking to the larger topic of history in general. And that history shows that everyone close to Kennedy insists that he was in fact serious and determined to pull back militarily from not just Indochina, but on more general terms in an effort to bring peace before the planet was consumed in nuclear flames.

“Well, we took care of that son of a bitch [JFK], didn’t we?”~ David Sanchez Morales
[actual quote to his lawyer Robert Walton]
While researching a documentary, Shane O’Sullivan discovered a news film of the Ambassador Hotel on the day Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated. Bradley Ayers and other people who knew them, identified David Sanchez Morales, Gordon Campbell and George Joannides as being three men in the hotel that day. An article about this story appeared in The Guardian and on BBC Newsnight on 20th November, 2006.http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKmorales.htm
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Willy WhittenYour comment is awaiting moderation.
April 15, 2015 at 4:50 pm
“Last time I looked NSAM 263 was NOT a military record. Did you miss that?”
~Bill Clarke

Oh dear, excuse me Bill, what was I thinking? You are absolutely right!
NSAM 263 has nothing whatsoever to do with military history! It was a memo about catering services for banquets at the White House.

I am going to point out one more time, with the graces of our moderators, that your characterizing those who disagree with your interpretation of NSAM 263 as “dishonest” is as insulting as any other form of ad hominem.
It is scurrilous and a slur. I am sure that all who disagree with your interpretations would agree to that.

Your argumentation such as the last comment about NSAM not being a “military record”, is a form of parsing language in a disingenuous manner. You seem to pretend here that “National Security” ie; “NS” in “NSAM”; in this instance referring to military affairs as “NOT a military record”, when in fact it would plainly be part of the military history of the Vietnam War.

“Nice diversionary attempt here Willy. What we ARE speaking to is you making a false statement about what NSAM 263 says. If you are going to reference NSAM 263 you should do so accurately. You don’t get to reference it and then plug in your own disinformation. Not and remain credible.”~Bill Clarke

Did Mr Clarke NOT just call me a liar? “making a false statement” … isn’t that the same thing as claiming I lied? Let’s not fuck around with language here like this son-of-a-bitch does.
This is the kind of bullshit we get from these Warren Commission cultists. Aggressive, scandalous, and abusive slurs against our character.
And yet we are supposed to treat this motherfucker with kid gloves according to my experience with the moderators on JFKfacts. Such biased moderation is infuriating and incomprehensible.
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“Can you handle this one for me? bc. I have heard Prouty make the claim but I have never heard Krulak make the claim. You have a reference for that?”~Bill Clarke

Yes, Prouty who was very close to Krulak quoted what Krulak had answered back, that he agreed it was Lansdale in Dealey Plaza. But as Bill says about anyone who he disagrees with, he says that Prouty is a liar. Just like Bill called me a liar. Bill Clarke’s arguments are founded on scurrilous rhetoric and ad hominem. That is how he settles any dispute made to him. And if JFKfacts won’t allow me to out Bill Clarke as a punk and a fraud on their site – by God I will do it here!
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Today, due to people like Raymond Gallagher, (Probe Vol. 5 No. 6, p.
10) and especially John Armstrong, we can show that it is highly
doubtful that Oswald ever ordered that rifle. Evidence from the
official records suggests that the sixth floor rifle was not the rifle
delivered to Lee Oswald in March of 1963

Raymond Gallagher, new to PROBE, delves into the unique sales history
of Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano. How did the bank deposit Oswald’s
money order for the weapon before Oswald wrote it ?

Louis Feldsott of Crescent Arms told the FBI that C 2766 was sold to
Klein’s on June 18,1962, yet Waldman , at Klein’s, did not order the
rifles until January 24, 1963. (SEE Waldman Testimony Warren
Commission Hearings: Vol. VII – Page 362 )

To my knowledge, no one has explained the difference. But there is an
even further discrepancy. Waldman testified that Klein’s received
Oswald’s money order of $21.45 on March 13, 1963 and it was deposited,
along with other money orders and checks, into a company account at
the First National Bank of Chicago. Waldman testified to the
Commission attorney David Belin that the postmark date of the money
order leaving Dallas was March 12 ( WC Vol,7, p. 366.) Waldman further
testified that the deposit was made on the 13th. and it was part of a
total deposit of $13,827.98.

( Belin did not ask him to explain how, before the advent of computers, an
order could be shipped 700 miles, received, processed and deposited in 24
hours) But yet, the bank deposit slip, the extra copy provided by the
bank at the time of the transfer, reads FEBRUARY 15, 1963, not March 13
th.This is about one month before Oswald sent the coupon for the rifle by
air mail to Chicago .

( See Waldman Exhibit no. 10 p. 706 ) Of course, if the February date is
correct, and there is no reason to doubt it, then C 2766 could not be the
correct serial number on the rifle in the so-called back yard photographs.

See deposit slip deposited with The First National Bank of Chicago Date
2/15/63

SEE Feldsott Affadavit The following affidavit was executed by Louis
Feldsott on July 23. 1964.
PRESIDENT’S COMMISSION
ON THE ASSASSINATION OF AFFIDAVIT
PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
STATE OF NEW YORK,
Country of Rockland, ss:

I, Louis Feldsott, being duly sworn say:
1. I am the President of Crescent Firearms, Inc., 2 West 37th Street,
New York 18, New York.
2. On November 22, 1963, the F.B.I. contacted me and asked if
Crescent Firearms, Inc., had any records concerning .the sale of an
Italian made 6.5 m/m rifle with the serial number C 2766.
3. I was able to find a record of the sale of this rifle which
indicated that the weapon had been sold to Kleins’ Sporting Goods,
Inc., Chicago, Illinois on June 18, 1962. I conveyed this information
to the F.B.I. during the evening of November 22, 1963.
4. Further records involving the purchase, sale, and transportation
of the weapon have been turned over to the F.B.I.

Signed the 23d day of July 1964.
(S) Louis Feldsott,
LOUIS FELDSOTT.

Waldman:
Mr. Waldman.
Yes; on the same form we show a record of the receipt of the rifles
in question, specifically this extreme right-hand column which is
filled in, indicating that on February 22, delivery was made to us by
Lifschultz Trucking Co. I might explain the difference in the two
dates here.

Mr. Belin.
Go ahead.

Mr. Waldman.
The February 21 date is the date in which the merchandise came to our
premises whereas the date of February 22, is the date in which they
were officially received by our receiving department.

This is a delivery receipt from the Lifschultz Fast Freight covering
10 cases of guns delivered to Klein’s on February 21, 1963, from
Crescent Firearms.

As indicated on Waldman Deposition Exhibit No. 7.

Now, we CANNOT SPECIFICALLY SAY when this money order was deposited,
but on our deposit of March 13, 1963, we show AN ITEM of $21.45, as
indicated on the Xerox copy of our deposit slip marked, or identified
by–as Waldman Deposition Exhibit No. 10.

Mr. Belin.
And I have just marked as a document what you are reading from, which
appears to be a deposit with the First National Bank of Chicago by
your company; is that correct?

Mr. Waldman.
That’s correct.

Mr. Belin.
And on that deposit, one of the items is $21.45, out of a total
deposit that day of $13,827.98; is that correct?

(Klein’s and Seaport Traders) were under investigation by the Dodd
Committee at the time of the orders.Despite considerable evidence to
the contrary, some critics have questioned whether Lee Harvey Oswald
really owned the revolver used to shoot Officer J.D. Tippit. Recently,
allegations have been made based on a 1974 unpublished manuscript by
Fred T. Newcomb and Perry Adams titled, Murder From Within.

According to Newcomb and Adams, a 1964 Senate Judiciary Subcommittee
looking into mail-order firearms trafficking published a chart which
showed that Seaport Traders, the firm Oswald ordered his .38 caliber
Smith and Wesson revolver from, never shipped any .38 revolvers to
Dallas, Texas in March 1963 – the month of Oswald’s order. Newcomb and
Adams concluded that “Oswald’s gun, in effect, did not exist.”

Although critics have clung to Newcomb and Adams’ assertions as proof
positive of forged documents, cover-ups, and the alleged framing of
Oswald, little has been done to substantiate Newcomb and Adams’
claims. In fact, a review of the record shows Newcomb and Adam’s
allegations to be false and misleading.

The WC needed to prove there was only one Mannlicher-Carcano with serial
number C2766 and questioned Klein’s Vice-President William Waldman. When
Waldman told Commission Atty David Belin that Mannlicher-Carcano’s were
made by a number of ***different manufacturers*** Belin responded by
asking, “Does the ***same manufacturer*** give different serial numbers
for each weapon?” Waldman answered, “The gun manufacturers imprint a
different number on each gun. It’s stamped into the frame of the gun and
serves as a unique identification for each gun.”

*David Belin obviously asked William Waldman the wrong question. He
should have asked if ***different manufacturers could have used indentical
serial numbers.*** When the FBI interviewed William Suchet, the owner of
International Firearms Ltd. of Montreal, he said that different
manufacturers in Italy sometimes used the same serial numbers on
Mannlicher-Carcano rifles.

The Commission, using the testimony they received from Waldman, wrote in
their final report, “..the number C2766 is the serial number.” The
Commission concluded, “The number ‘C2766’ is the serial number of the
rifle, and the rifle in question is the only one of its type bearing that
serial number.”

“Finally, as we all know today, the evidence which the HSCA used as the “lynchpin” in its case against Oswald has now been thoroughly discredited. That would be the Comparative Bullet Lead Analysis, sometimes called Neutron Activation Analysis for bullet lead traces. That FBI procedure always had questions surrounding it. In fact, the first time it had been used was in the JFK case. Today, after the painstaking reviews by two professional teams of metallurgists and statisticians, it has been so vitiated that the FBI will never use it again in court. (ibid, pgs. 72-73) Unfortunately, that verdict came a bit late for Oswald.

When approaching CE 399 today, the so-called Magic Bullet, one wonders how Warren Commission defenders can keep a straight face discussing it. All the desperate schemes used in the past decade on cable TV shows with their preposterous computer simulations and numerous trajectories all avoid the main point. And it is the similar problem that we have with CE 543. Today, the adduced evidence trail indicates that CE 399 was never fired in Dealey Plaza. The work of people like Gary Aguilar and Josiah Thompson, John Hunt, and Robert Harris, clearly indicates that CE 399 is, and always was, a plant.”~ James DiEugeniohttp://www.ctka.net/2014/state_of_case.html
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“There are actually several conflicting single bullet theories, a good reason, among many, to reject them. Rejecting them means there was more than one shooter. It also means there are problems with the ballistics evidence. This article endeavors to end assumptions about the suppression of that evidence. Notwithstanding the failure of the single bullet theories, and actually precluding them, we argue that the existence of a conspiracy is sufficiently proved by exposing two unreliable claims of the Warren Commission; by exhausting all conceivable innocent explanations for those claims; by arguing that they were instead “damage control” attempts to deflect honest inquiry; and by calling into question long-accepted theories about the alleged murder weapon and its alleged misidentification.

We demonstrate how the planting of specific evidence — a part of the weapon — was based on an error. The perpetrators quickly realized the mistake but not soon enough to correct it or hide it. All they could do was deflect attention from it. It was an error so obvious that it would have exposed, within hours of Lee Harvey Oswald’s arrest, the conspiracy to frame him. In fact, the error has never been hidden, just confused. We therefore show that damage control was the motive for the unanticipated, but criminally necessary and deliberate, prolonged misidentification of the weapon.”~Walter F. Graf and Richard R. Bartholomewhttp://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/19th_Issue/gtds.html
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After publication, I modified this piece on the suggestion of Mark Zaid, Anthony Summers, and John McAdams. Originally I included Col. Fletcher Prouty as one of the Washington insiders who suspected a JFK plot. Nothing I wrote about Prouty was inaccurate but these readers advised me of other things Prouty had done and said that called into question his veracity. So he’s not the best example to cite. I replaced him with another Washington insider, Joseph Califano.

For the record, here’s what I wrote about Prouty.

5) Col. L. Fletcher Prouty: This career military man served as chief of Pentagon special operations in 1963. He believed that there had been a plot against JFK among enemies of his policies in the national security agencies. Prouty was the basis for the character “Colonel X” in Oliver Stone’s “JFK.”

What the fuck??? This is insignificant trivia more appropriate to People Magazine than a serious site for discussing the JFK assassination.
This is junk journalism by Jefferson Morley. Filler to an already too full banquet.
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> Ad hominem
A Latin phrase that has come to mean attacking one’s opponent, as opposed to attacking their arguments.

> Ad nauseam
This argument approach uses tireless repetition of an idea. An idea, especially a simple slogan, that is repeated enough times, may begin to be taken as the truth. This approach works best when media sources are limited or controlled by the propagator.

> Appeal to authority
Appeals to authority cite prominent figures to support a position, idea, argument, or course of action.

The Walker bullet had been fired from a rifle powerful enough to send it through brickwork, which the Mannlicher–Carcano rifle was not. There is no evidence that Oswald ever had access to such a rifle.
Not only did the bullet and rifle have no association with Lee Harvey Oswald, but Edwin Walker was adamant that Commission Exhibit 573, the bullet offered in evidence, was not the one he had examined at the time of the shooting; see Justice Department Criminal Division File 62–117290–1473 for Walker’s correspondence with the Justice Department on this matter.

“After publication, I modified this piece on the suggestion of Mark Zaid, Anthony Summers, and John McAdams. Originally I included Col. Fletcher Prouty as one of the Washington insiders who suspected a JFK plot. Nothing I wrote about Prouty was inaccurate but these readers advised me of other things Prouty had done and said that called into question his veracity. So he’s not the best example to cite. I replaced him with another Washington insider, Joseph Califano.

Len Osanic
February 8, 2014 at 9:02 pm
“I’m wondering now what kind of journalist reporter that Morely is ?
First who asks mcadams for advice on anything?
Mark Zaid. seriously…
Second, you would someone who knew the man, or check his official website. The Col. L. Fletcher Prouty Reference Site. http://www.prouty.org

To even consider asking mcadams for advice, is why morley is on the outside looking in. Prouty’s, The Secret Team book published by Balentine books first printing 1974. JFK by Birch Lane Press /Carol Publishing 1992. And now both on Skyhorse Publishing. Oliver Stone hired Fletcher for the making of JFK, and thought highly of him, and echoed that in my interview with him on Black Op Radio in January. To obfuscate what Prouty writes about, with a one time licence deal to re-print a limited run for the IHR publisher is saying, “don’t look behind the curtain”.
Morely has my phone number and email but doesn’t have the guts to call me or Dave Ratcliffe. I leave it up to you to decides if he even knows anything about Fletcher Prouty, or further has the journalistic skills to write about this topic, which his website claims as “FACTS”. When you have to ask a mcadams, what the facts are, that means you really don’t have any idea at all.

Makes me regret even having morley take part in my
50 Reasons For 50 Years series.”

Acoustics Evidence
The House Select Committee on Assassinations stunned many people with its finding that Kennedy was “probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.” The HSCA’s finding was based in large part, though not solely, on its analysis of acoustics evidence.
Mary Ferrell and others brought to the attention of the HSCA the existence of a police dictabelt which might contain sounds of the shooting in Dealey Plaza. One channel of police transmissions had been open during this time due to a stuck microphone switch. The HSCA hired two outside laboratories to analyze the dictabelt. While the roar of motorcycle engine noise drowned out much of the audio from a human listener’s perspective, distinct spikes in volume could be analyzed statistically, based on comparison between the pattern of such spikes and the echo patterns which the buildings in the Plaza would create. The experts found 6 impulses on the dictabelt whose echo patterns matched what one would expect from gunfire in the plaza. The HSCA then conducted a field study, placing microphones in Dealey Plaza and firing rifles fired from the Book Depository’s “sniper’s nest” and from spots behind the fence on the grassy knoll.
In the end, the scientists found a solid match for a shot from the grassy knoll. Due to its medical conclusions that all shots which struck the motorcade came from the rear, a finding which has long been questioned, the Committee determined that the grassy knoll shot missed. This strange juxtaposition of the existence a shot from the knoll, but calling it a missed shot, opened the Committee to disbelief and ridicule from all sides.
The HSCA’s analysis was later called into question by a panel of scientists headed by Norman Ramsey. But that “debunking” has itself been called into serious question by the re-analysis of scientist D.B. Thomas, described most thoroughly in his book Hear No Evil.

Mr. Fletcher Prouty
Alexandria, Virginia
Dear Fletch:
As I read your interesting letter it is plain that you have not wanted for interest or achievement in your life. It has to have been exciting and rewarding too.

Mine has been a lively existence too. I had much to do with Vietnam from ’64 to ’68, and was loudly disenchanted with what went on and how. I recorded it as part of my book First to Fight that came out a few months ago.

I’ve also spent ten years in the newspaper business (a most useful education) and now write a syndicated weekly column. I wrote another book, Organization for National Security that resulted in my testifying before a Senate committee.

All taken together, a stirring life.

As to your chronicle concerning the JFK assassination period, I remember your going to Antarctica. I was in the Pentagon at the time of the tragedy but have no recollection of where Lansdale was.

The pictures.– The two policemen are carrying shotguns, not rifles. Their caps are different (one a white chinstrap, one black). One has a Dallas police shoulder patch, one does not and their caps differ from that of another police officer in photo 4. Reasonable conclusion — they are either reservists or phonys. And, as you know, city cops don’t have anything to do with Sheriff’s offices.

As to photo no. 1. That is indeed a picture of Ed Lansdale. The haircut, the stoop, the twisted left hand, the large class ring. It’s Lansdale. What in the world was he doing there? Has anyone ever asked him and who was the photographer? Why did he take the pictures? What did he do with them?

I have examined my own records and find no clue that would help. Suffice to say, it is a fascinating proposition.

Under contract by the HSCA, the firm of Bolt, Beranek, & Newman(BBN) analyzed a tape recording of the JFK motorcade in Dealey Plaza and found 4 possible shots The most controversial was the shot from the grassy knoll, which would imply that a conspiracy was involved. Because BB&N could only state the probability for that shot was 50%, HSCA asked acoustics experts Weiss and Aschkenasy (W&A) to refine the data on that shot in order to reduce the uncertainty either way. W&A stated with a 95% confidence that the impulse on the DPD tape recording was a gunshot fired from the grassy knoll. The HSCA relied quite heavily on that conclusion in issuing its finding of a conspiracy.

The U.S. Justice Department (DOJ), instead of then investigating the conspiracy, attempted to discredit the HSCA findings. Its first attempt using the FBI bugging experts failed due to the lack of competence in the necessary disciplines. DOJ then had to assign the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) the task of discrediting the HSCA’s acoustical findings. To be sure of the outcome, only government connected scientists, most with ties to the intelligence community, were selected and they worked in total secrecy without any challenge from independent researchers. It was hoped that their prestige would end the debate and their mandate was only to discredit the acoustical analysis of the HSCA, not to find the truth. The budget they were given was so limited that they could not do the necessary tests beyond those needed to discredit the HSCA. The DOJ was highly successful. It’s been over a year since the issuance of the NAS Report and not one scientist has dared challenge it. It’s a national disgrace for a country Which prides itself on freedom of thought that the challenge has to come from an ordinary blue-collar worker, rather than the scientific community.

Note: Bolt,Beranek and Newman is an important defense contractor, especially to the Navy. If their basic understanding of science is as flawed as Ramsey suggests the implications are frightening. In that case, they couldn’t tell a Russian sub from a whale by sonar. No intercepted code could be decrypted, because the noise reducing or filtering algorithms would be suspect.

“There is already too much truth in the world – an overproduction which apparently cannot be consumed!” – Otto Rank

“For centuries man lived in the belief that truth was slim and elusive and that once he found it the troubles of mankind would be over. And here we are in the closing decades of the 20th century, choking on truth…the mind is silent as the world spins on its age-old demonic career.” – Ernest Becker

12:32 PM The telephone system in Washington DC went dead either completely or intermittently 2.5 minutes after the assassination; it was not restored for an hour. The explanation was that the breakdown was caused by overloaded phone wires. (Cover Up 199; Death of a President 198-99). “Telephone service in the nation’s capital collapsed temporarily. The sudden load of telephone calls swamped central stations and it was impossible to get dial tone to make calls.” (Los Angeles Times 11/23/1963)

Dr. Ronald Coy Jones testifies: “There was a large defect in the back side of the head as the President lay on the cart with what appeared to be some brain hanging out of this wound with multiple pieces of skull noted next with the brain and with a tremendous amount of clot and blood.”

“Dr. Gene Akin, an Anesthesiologist at Parkland, testifies that “the back of the right occipital-parietal portion of JFK’s head was shattered, with brain substance extruding.”

“Dr. Charles Baxter testifies that there is “a large gaping wound in the back of the skull.” Baxter will also insist that the wound in the throat was “no more than a pinpoint. It was made by a small caliber weapon. And it was an entry wound.””

“The Texas Theater begins showing newsreels and cartoons prior to the main feature, “War Is Hell.” Concession attendant Butch Burroughs will tell British film producer Nigel Turner, “Oswald slipped into the theater between 1:00 and 1:07 PM.” Butch Burroughs, an employee of the Texas Theater, hears someone enter the Texas Theater shortly after 1:00 PM and go to the balcony. About 1:15 PM LHO comes down from the balcony and buys popcorn from Burroughs. Burroughs watches him walk down the aisle and take a seat on the main floor. He sits next to Jack Davis during the opening credits of the first movie, several minutes before 1:20 PM. LHO then moves across the aisle and sits next to another man. A few minutes later Davis notices he moves again and sits next to a pregnant woman. Just before the police arrive, the pregnant woman goes to the balcony and is never seen again. In addition to Oswald there are seven people watching the movie on the main level (six after the pregnant woman left). Within 10 minutes, LHO will sit next to half of them. Note that at this time, J.D. Tippit has not yet been shot.”~Timeline
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Weisberg: “The police were at least consistent. The boxes in the area, especially those allegedly stacked up by the assassin to serve as a gun rest (7H149), were treated with equal carelessness. They were moved before they were photographed. Some had been moved before the police identification people arrived. Yet these were the pictures used to re-enact and reconstruct the crime!” (Whitewash)

1:12 PM DPD Lt. John Carl Day and Det. Studebaker arrive at the TSBD. (CE3145 26H829) Day takes a photograph which appears to show only two empty cartridges and one round of live ammunition laying on the floor. H&L Tomorrow, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover will sign a report that is sent to DPD Chief Jesse Curry which will identify two cartridge casings and one live cartridge that have been turned over to SA Vince Drain. The cartridges will be tested for latent fingerprints with negative results. Five days from now Captain Fritz will produce a third empty shell that he allegedly found on the sixth floor. This will conveniently back up the “official” story of three shots. The question is why Capt. Fritz picked up an empty casing on the sixth floor and failed to follow police procedure by immediately turning it over to the identification bureau. Additionally, the third empty casing has the initials “GD” scratched on it when it was allegedly picked up by Captain Fritz. “GD” would have most probably represented Captain George Doughty. However, Captain Doughty will not remember handling the third empty cartridge.
Weisberg: “The story of the empty rifle shells is just as bad and does not require complete tracing. They were photographed in place. Detective Sims carefully picked them up and Day sought fingerprints. There were none. They were put into an unsealed envelope which Day signed and returned to Sims. Although Day had earlier informed the Commission he had marked all three shells at the scene, he admitted that was incorrect. At about 10 o’clock that night he had marked two of the shells. Although the third shell was missing, Day said, “I didn’t examine it too close at that time.” The third shell bears the identification of Captain George Doughty, Day’s superior. Why the shells did not all bear Day’s mark is unexplained. How Doughty’s mark constitutes any kind of an identification at all is a mystery. There was much conflicting and contradictory testimony about these empty cases and a number of affidavits of further explanation were filed. There is this additional mystery: Day was asked by the examiner of one of these shells, “It appears to be flattened out here. Do you know or have you any independent recollection as to whether or not is was flattened out on the small end when you saw it?” Day’s response was, “No, sir; I don’t.” What needs explaining is how a deformed shell fit into a precisely machined rifle breach (4H253-5).” (Whitewash)

At this point, there are no photographs or any mention that an ammunition clip has been found in or near the sniper’s nest. Only when the Warren Report is issued in September 1964 will the public learn that “when the rifle was found in the Texas School Book Depository Building it contained a clip.” This assertion is unsupported by direct evidence and testimony. No fingerprints will be found on the clip – which holds six shells. One additional shell can also be loaded in the chamber of the rifle. Three spent shells are found on the sixth floor of the TSBD. One live shell will be ejected from the rifle now. This indicates that the clip was not fully loaded at the time of the assassination – which means that LHO set out to murder the President with only four shells – his last and only shells at that. No other rifle ammunition is ever found. Marina Oswald will later initially testify on December 16, 1963, that “Oswald did not have any ammunition for the rifle to her knowledge in either Dallas or New Orleans, and he did not speak of buying ammunition.” However, Marina’s story will change when she is questioned by the Commission on February 3, 1964. At that time, she will remember seeing ammunition in a box “in New Orleans and on Neely Street.”

Douglas Horne disregards the two premier experts in film and special effects cinematography. Instead he has chosen to run with a pack of howling jackals led by the proven liar and charlatan James Fetzer.
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The next confrontation with the defense and intelligence establishments had already begun as JFK resisted pressure from Eisenhower, the Joint Chiefs and the CIA to prop up the CIA’s puppet government in Laos against the communist Pathet Lao guerrillas. The military wanted 140,000 ground troops, with some officials advocating for nuclear weapons. “If it hadn’t been for Cuba,” JFK told Schlesinger, “we might be about to intervene in Laos. I might have taken this advice seriously.” JFK instead signed a neutrality agreement the following year and was joined by 13 nations, including the Soviet Union.

As JFK’s relationship with his military-intelligence apparatus deteriorated, a remarkable relationship with Khrushchev began. Both were battle-hardened war veterans seeking a path to rapprochement and disarmament, encircled by militarists clamoring for war. In Kennedy’s case, both the Pentagon and the CIA believed war with the Soviets was inevitable and therefore desirable in the short term while we still had the nuclear advantage. In the autumn of 1961, as retired Gen. Lucius Clay, who had taken a civilian post in Berlin, launched a series of unauthorized provocations against the Soviets, Khrushchev began an extraordinary secret correspondence with JFK. With the Berlin crisis moving toward nuclear Armageddon, Khrushchev turned to KGB agent Georgi Bolshakov, a top Soviet spy in Washington, to communicate directly with JFK. Bolshakov, to the horror of the U.S. State Department, was a friend of my parents and a frequent guest at our home. Bolshakov smuggled a letter, the first of 21 declassified in 1993, to JFK’s press secretary, Pierre Salinger, in a folded newspaper. In it, Khrushchev expressed regret about Vienna and embraced JFK’s proposal for a path to peace and disarmament.https://nominay.wordpress.com/2015/04/20/the-trouble-with-henry-cabot-lodge/

In the late afternoon of Thursday, November 21, Forrestal spoke with the president in the Oval Office, just hours before his departure for Texas . Looking to the near future, the president asserted, “I want you to come and see me because we have to start to plan for what we are going to do now in South Vietnam . I want to start a complete and very profound review of how we got into this country, and what we thought we were doing, and what we now think we can do. I even want to think about whether or not we should be there.” The election campaign precluded any “drastic changes of policy, quickly,” but I want to consider “how some kind of a gradual shift in our presence in South Vietnam [could] occur.”

Just as the withdrawal plan moved to implementation, President Kennedy was assassinated, bringing the process to a close. His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, followed the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to revise NSAM 273 by shifting the focus from the Vietcong to covert actions against Hanoi . The proposal, code-named OPLAN 34A, became what the Pentagon Papers later termed “an elaborate program of covert military operations against the state of North Vietnam,” which led to the establishment of a “black” sabotage organization code-named the Studies and Observations Group (SOG) that engineered more than 2000 covert assaults on the north and its military installations in Laos and Cambodia.
– See more at: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/3446#sthash.B6fdGxmO.dpuf

On June 10th, 1963, at American University, Kennedy gave his greatest speech ever, calling for an end to the Cold War, painting the heretical vision of America living and competing peacefully with Soviet Communists. World peace, he proposed, would not be “a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war.” He challenged Cold War fundamentalists who cast the world as a clash of civilizations in which one side must win and the other annihilated. He suggested instead that peaceful coexistence with the Soviets might be the most expedient path to ending totalitarianism.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/john-f-kennedys-vision-of-peace-20131120#ixzz3YFmcgTbE

Henry Cabot Lodge deserves further scrutiny as a character in this saga of assassination and conspiracy. He was detrimental to JFK’s safety by putting him on disastrous terms with the Central Intelligence Agency, over Cuba. Lodge’s role was unique in providing the CIA with the impetus to kill the President. Kennedy’s adversaries within the government, chiefly at the CIA and Pentagon, had a commitment to win the cold war at all costs. This is not just the view of conspiracy theorists, but also of multiple, government insiders, including JFK’s very own pick to represent him at brokering a peace deal with Castro – William Atwood. In Anthony Summer’s book, “Not In Your Lifetime”, he quotes the former UN Ambassador, Atwood, as saying:

“If the CIA did find out what we were doing [talks toward normalizing relations with Cuba] … they might have been impelled to take violent action. Such as assassinating the President.”

“I don’t recall anyone who was strongly against sending combat troops, except one man and that was the President. The President just didn’t want to be convinced that this was the right thing to do….It was really the President’s personal conviction that U.S. ground troops shouldn’t go in.” Maxwell Taylor, in recorded interview by L.J. Hackman, 11/13/69
[See: Robert Kennedy and His Times By Arthur M. Schlesinger]“That is our objective to bring Americans home…permit the South Vietnamese to maintain themselves as a free and independent country…”~JFK, November 14, 1963
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Is maintaining and intensifying negotiation and political pressure “withdrawal”? This is something no one seems to willing to parse here in these discussions.
Remaining engaged diplomatically would not be “withdrawal” and it wouldn’t mean military escalation either.
I think it is more than obvious that Kennedy was on the path of negotiation, and would never have introduced ground forces, nor carpet bombing North Vietnam.
Remember he had been successful earlier in Laos with that exact strategy of negotiating a settlement.
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In accordance with Rusk’s earlier argument, the administration used the coup’s success to justify withdrawal. Before a press conference on November 14, President Kennedy asserted that at the scheduled Honolulu Conference in six days, his advisers would develop detailed plans for the initial troop withdrawal. Presidential adviser McGeorge Bundy afterward drafted a National Security Action Memorandum that he expected President Kennedy to sign as the precursor to withdrawal. According to NSAM 273, the White House remained committed to “the withdrawal of U.S. military personnel.”

In the late afternoon of Thursday, November 21, Forrestal spoke with the president in the Oval Office, just hours before his departure for Texas . Looking to the near future, the president asserted, “I want you to come and see me because we have to start to plan for what we are going to do now in South Vietnam . I want to start a complete and very profound review of how we got into this country, and what we thought we were doing, and what we now think we can do. I even want to think about whether or not we should be there.” The election campaign precluded any “drastic changes of policy, quickly,” but I want to consider “how some kind of a gradual shift in our presence in South Vietnam [could] occur.”

Just as the withdrawal plan moved to implementation, President Kennedy was assassinated, bringing the process to a close. His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, followed the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to revise NSAM 273 by shifting the focus from the Vietcong to covert actions against Hanoi . The proposal, code-named OPLAN 34A, became what the Pentagon Papers later termed “an elaborate program of covert military operations against the state of North Vietnam,” which led to the establishment of a “black” sabotage organization code-named the Studies and Observations Group (SOG) that engineered more than 2000 covert assaults on the north and its military installations in Laos and Cambodia.
– See more at: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/3446#sthash.B6fdGxmO.dpuf

“Once, at that time, you reported in a small front-page box that some American major general was visiting Vietnam. The President called me at home and in decidedly purple language took me to task for letting an American general visit Vietnam. “Remember Laos,” he said on this and other occasions; the United States, he said, must keep a low profile in Vietnam so we can negotiate its neutralization as we had in Laos.

When he paused for breath, I pointed out that I had no authority to deny a general permission to visit Vietnam — in fact, I had not even known about the trip. “Oh,” said the President and slammed down the phone without even saying goodbye. That afternoon a National Security Action Memorandum came out saying that no officer of flag or general rank could visit Vietnam without the written permission of the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs.”~ROGER HILSMAN – Kennedy’s Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, the officer responsible for Vietnam

A good friend of my made these prescient remarks in an email to me tonight. I want to share them here:

“I am really not convinced that presidents have the power or the ability to effect foreign policy that much, if any. Especially in the case of JFK and Vietnam, which is a conflict he had inherited as he took office.

That said, it does seem like JFK himself believed that he could reverse the course on not just Vietnam, but on almost all aspects of the shadow government. I believe he had the brains, the guts and the power to try to do that, or die trying. Alas, “die trying” is essentially what he ended up doing.

Where the JFK Vietnam argument is falling short in terms of being the reason for the assasination is that it can not sufficiently describe or explain the Dealey coup… Same thing applies to the mafia, and the federal reserve and its bankers… None of them by themselves can be an explanation, or an arrow pointing to the perps.

It is only and only when one accepts the fact that these are all parts of a single beast called “the power structure” that symbiotically work together under a stealth and highly organized transnational governing system, that one can begin to comprehend how deep the coup actually went, and how many different parties were involved in it.

I believe JFK was determined to go against the status quo of this power structure, speaking of peace, sovereignty, right to print money, eradicating the mafia, disassembling the CIA, conspiracy of secret societies and god knows what else behind closed doors that I am not aware of.

He had caught the winds of public support, and the peace&social justice driven naive hope of the younger generation in his sail, and had he stayed in office for two terms, he would have done quite a bit of damage by hacking at the main columns of the temple of money and war. So, it was not, and could not have been any one facet that caused discontent with the powers, it was just that, in their eyes, he had become a rogue president who had to be not only eliminated, but made an example of to any future leaders who might consider following in his footsteps… RFK was going to try… And then, BOOM! In that sense, RFK’s death was almost equally tragic as JFK’s… That was the end of hope for a brighter future as far as I am concerned…. When the only capable heir to fill JFK’s shoes was eliminated, the coup was finally complete…. We all know how the rest went down… They also killed jr. who seemed destined for greatness.

When the biased and narrow minded argue about these issues, they fall victim to their own anger or pride or nationalism or ignorance or the brainwashing propaganda they have been subjected to, which prevents them from seeing the big picture. Are those the ones you speak of when you say “no one seems to willing to parse here in these discussions”?”
. . . . . . .

Willy,’I think it is more than obvious that Kennedy was on the path of negotiation, and would never have introduced ground forces, nor carpet bombing North Vietnam.
Remember he had been successful earlier in Laos with that exact strategy.’
. . . . . .
“Is there some pre-assassination document showing that JFK was on a path of negotiation?” ~Jean Davison
. . . . .
What do you mean a “document” singular? Kennedy’s entire history as a diplomat and politician speak to this. You have just as much access to his speeches and private talks and transcripts thereof as anyone else with an Internet connection.

We have already gone through the back-channel efforts Kennedy was making to negotiate peaceful settlements with Khrushchev, and Castro. We have his successes with such negotiated settlements I already listed.
It is you and your comrades here Jean, who are arguing against history.
. . . . . .
“Thanks, I’ll take that as a “no.”~Jean Davison
. . . . . .
No, you should rather take it as I put it; ‘many’, too many to list. Many on video from Kennedy’s own mouth. Transcripts of those talks and speeches.
Kennedy is very clear on his preference for negotiated settlements of political issues, and is always in favor of that rather than military hostilities.

Don’t forget Jean, Kennedy inherited the situation in Indochina. The CIA had been involved in machinations there since WWII, they were pushing their agenda and access to heroin. They had Air America, a small air force of their own, that evolved out of Chennault’s flying tigers’s.
[See; Alfred W McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in South East Asia]

Mr. KENNEDY. “Mr. President, the most powerful single force in the world today is neither communism nor capitalism, neither the H-bomb nor the guided missile it is man’s eternal desire to be free and independent. The great enemy of that tremendous force of freedom is called, for want of a more precise term, imperialism – and today that means Soviet imperialism and, whether we like it or not, and though they are not to be equated, Western imperialism.
Thus the single most important test of American foreign policy today is how we meet the challenge of imperialism, what we do to further man’s desire to be free. On this test more than any other, this Nation shall be critically judged by the uncommitted millions in Asia and Africa, and anxiously watched by the still hopeful lovers of freedom behind the Iron Curtain. If we fail to meet the challenge of either Soviet or Western imperialism, then no amount of foreign aid, no aggrandizement of armaments, no new pacts or doctrines or high-level conferences can prevent further setbacks to our course and to our security.
I am concerned today that we are failing to meet the challenge of imperialism – on both counts – and thus failing in our responsibilities to the free world. I propose, therefore, as the Senate and the Nation prepare to commemorate the 181st anniversary of man’s noblest expression against political repression, to begin a two-part series of speeches, examining America’s role in the continuing struggles for independence that strain today against the forces of imperialism within both the Soviet and Western worlds. My intention is to talk not of general principles, but of specific cases – to propose not partisan criticisms but what I hope will be constructive solutions.”

There is no grasping the JFK Assassination without an understanding of Skull & Bones

It all began at Yale. In 1832, General William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft put together a super secret society for the elite children of the Anglo- American Wall Street banking establishment. William Huntington Russell’s step-brother Samuel Russell ran “Russell & Co.”, the world’s largest OPIUM
smuggling operation in the world at the time. Alphonso Taft is the Grandfather of our ex-president Howard Taft, the creator of the Forerunner to the United Nations.

The society’s assets are managed by the society’s alumni organization, the Russell Trust Association, incorporated in 1856 and named after the Bones co-founder. The association was founded by Russell and Daniel Coit Gilman, a Skull and Bones member, and later president of the University of California, first president of Johns Hopkins University, and the founding president of the Carnegie Institution.http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/skull_and_bones.htm
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Of all her later recollections about what President Kennedy intended to do, the most upsetting to her was what she curiously characterized as a “secret meeting,” with U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Henry Cabot Lodge.
Her account suggests that he went into uncharacteristic detail with her about the reasons for this, briefing her fully on the current and unfolding situation.

He would have had two strong reasons for doing this.

First, he was meeting with the Ambassador not at the White House but at their private weekend home “Wexford,” thus intruding on what was supposed to be set aside as time alone with her and their children.

Second, since the time they had first begun dating, while he was a freshman U.S. Senator and she was a newspaper columnist and photographer, he had known of her particular depth of knowledge and nuanced understanding of the delicate situation in Vietnam which, along with Laos and Cambodia, formed the former French colony of “Indochina.” She had begun studying the situation since 1949 while enrolled at the Sorbonne and she also translated French military policy reports for him on the matter in 1953.

It is not education, of course, but as political indoctrination it will be highly effective.
Blame it on the early indoctrination in the imperial system.
The results of this indoctrination campaign are already evident.
. . . . .
Mass schooling of a compulsory nature really got its teeth into the United States between 1905 and 1915, though it was conceived of much earlier and pushed for throughout most of the nineteenth century. The reason given for this enormous upheaval of family life and cultural traditions was, roughly speaking, threefold:
1) To make good people.
2) To make good citizens.
3) To make each person his or her personal best.

These goals are still trotted out today on a regular basis, and most of us accept them in one form or another as a decent definition of public education’s mission, however short schools actually fall in achieving them. But we are dead wrong. Compounding our error is the fact that the national literature holds numerous and surprisingly consistent statements of compulsory schooling’s true purpose. We have, for example, the great H. L. Mencken, who wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not

to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. . . . Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim.. . is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States . . . and that is its aim everywhere else.

Because of Mencken’s reputation as a satirist, we might be tempted to dismiss this passage as a bit of hyperbolic sarcasm. His article, however, goes on to trace the template for our own educational system back to the now vanished, though never to be forgotten, military state of Prussia. And although he was certainly aware of the irony that we had recently been at war with Germany, the heir to Prussian thought and culture, Mencken was being perfectly serious here. Our educational system really is Prussian in origin, and that really is cause for concern.

The odd fact of a Prussian provenance for our schools pops up again and again once you know to look for it. William James alluded to it many times at the turn of the century. Orestes Brownson, the hero of Christopher Lasch’s 1991 book, The True and Only Heaven, was publicly denouncing the Prussianization of American schools back in the 1840s. Horace Mann’s “Seventh Annual Report” to the Massachusetts State Board of Education in 1843 is essentially a paean to the land of Frederick the Great and a call for its schooling to be brought here. That Prussian culture loomed large in America is hardly surprising, given our early association with that utopian state. A Prussian served as Washington’s aide during the Revolutionary War, and so many German- speaking people had settled here by 1795 that Congress considered publishing a German-language edition of the federal laws. But what shocks is that we should so eagerly have adopted one of the very worst aspects of Prussian culture: an educational system deliberately designed to produce mediocre intellects, to hamstring the inner life, to deny students appreciable leadership skills, and to ensure docile and incomplete citizens – all in order to render the populace “manageable.”http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm

Naïveté is not innocence, it is gross and moribund ignorance.~ww
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“I now no longer believe anything the Agency [CIA] told the committee any further than I can obtain substantial corroboration for it from outside the Agency for its veracity…. “
— G. Robert Blakey, former Chief Counsel to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, in an addendum to the web page for the Frontline episode “Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?”.

Blakey wrote this after learning that CIA liaison George Joannides had been case officer for an anti-Castro group whose members had contact with accused assassin Lee Oswald in 1963.

Blakey explained:

“We also now know that the Agency set up a process that could only have been designed to frustrate the ability of the committee in 1976-79 to obtain any information that might adversely affect the Agency. Many have told me that the culture of the Agency is one of prevarication and dissimulation and that you cannot trust it or its people. Period. End of story. I am now in that camp.”
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James Angleton sums up his career in the CIA in a 1985 interview with author Joseph Trento

[Joseph Trento, “The Secret History of the CIA,” (2001) pp. 478-479]

“You know how I got to be in charge of counterintelligence? I agreed not to polygraph or require detailed background checks on Allen Dulles and 60 of his closest friends.” His monologue would stop only for a sip of tea or a violent fit of coughing. “They were too arrogant to believe that the Russians would discover it all.” The real problem Angleton concluded, was that “there was no accountability. And without real accountability everything turned to shit.”
All the trappings of Angleton’s legend were gone by this time, except for his love of exotic tea. But now, this man who had struck fear into most of his colleagues- this man who had been able to end a CIA career with a nod or a phone call- unassuming house in Arlington seemed empty. “You know, the CIA got tens of thousands of brave people killed… We played with lives as if we owned them. We gave false hope. We – I – so misjudged what happened.”
I asked the dying old man how it all went so wrong.
With no emotion in his voice, but with his hand trembling, Angleton replied: “Fundamentally, the founding fathers of U.S. intelligence were liars. The better you lied and the more you betrayed, the more likely you would be promoted. These people attracted and promoted each other. Outside of their duplicity, the only thing they had in common was a desire for absolute power. I did things that, in looking back on my life, I regret. But I was part of it and loved being in it …. Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, Carmel Offie, and Frank Wisner were the grand masters. If you were in a room with them you were in a room full of people that you had to believe would deservedly end up in hell.” Angleton slowly sippled his tea and then said, “I guess I will see them there soon.”

“And all the Kennedy team was finally got to openly to giving to the Vice President to the back of their hands,
and it was rather embarrassing for the country around Washington because it was so apparent. Then bang, all at once he is President.”~Curtis LeMay
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In the forty four years of sustained discussion about the official findings of the federal government’s investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy no author can equal the failure Vincent Bugliosi has achieved in his misnamed Reclaiming History.

Lee Harvey Oswald was linked to the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle alleged to have been used to shoot President Kennedy by the hair and fiber analysis of FBI expert Paul Stombaugh. The Warren Commission’s final report drew conclusions from Stombaugh’s testimony that buttressed assertions about Oswald’s guilt, particularly the association between hair and fiber evidence allegedly tying Oswald to the rifle.

The Commission considered Stombaugh’s testimony of “probative value,” the report stated.

But a devastating recent study by the Justice Department and the FBI shows that close analysis of cases involving hair and fiber testing raises grave concerns about the role of similar scientific testimony by law enforcement experts in criminal convictions.

“Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000,” the Washington Post reported on April 18.

“The review confirmed that FBI experts systematically testified to the near-certainty of ‘matches’ of crime-scene hairs to defendants, backing their claims by citing incomplete or misleading statistics drawn from their case work,” the Post’s Spencer Hsu reported.

“In reality, there is no accepted research on how often hair from different people may appear the same. Since 2000, the lab has used visual hair comparison to rule out someone as a possible source of hair or in combination with more accurate DNA testing.”

One University of Virginia law professor quoted by the Post described the results of the study as a “mass disaster.” The unfounded science has remained uncorrected because courts rely on outdated precedents that admitted scientifically invalid testimony at trial.

A 96 percent error rate

The Post report stated that the results of the first 268 cases examined showed that FBI testimony was fundamentally flawed in 257 of those cases — a “stunning” 96 percent of the total.
. . . . . .
In addition to the FBI’s discredited hair and fiber analysis, they also falsely relied on neutron activation analysis to claim that the bullet fragments and the “magic bullet” came from 2, and only 2, MC rounds. The HSCA doubled down on these findings, relying on analysis by Dr. Vincent Guinn of UC Irvine, in 1979, to support the SBT.
Subsequent studies have shown that the chemical composition of bullets from the same box may be identical, or may vary considerably. Randich, E. and Grant, P., “Journal of Forensic Sciences”, vol.51, no.4 (July, 2006); Spiegleman, C., et. al., “Annals of Applied Statistics,” vol.1, no.1 (2007).
Neutron Activation Analysis has been proven to be useless in determining the origin of bullet fragments, and the FBI has stopped using it for that purpose. But it is still useful in other areas, such as detecting gunpowder elements on human skin. LHO’s hands tested positive; his cheek tested negative, indicating that he fired a handgun, but not a rifle, on 11/22/63.http://jfkfacts.org/assassination/new-fbi-study-hair-analysis-warren-commission/
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My point is that some people in JFK’s administration were saying one thing about Vietnam up until 1966 or so and something quite different later on. Speaking of Orwell, it’s as if their earlier statements (and some of JFK’s) went down a Memory Hole.

For instance, take a look at this October 1963 Roger Hilsman memo that talks about U.S. policy on two issues: troop withdrawals and the neutralization of Vietnam. Hilsman wrote it, I didn’t, so don’t attack the messenger, Willie.”

SUBJECT
Possible Political Proposals at the United Nations General Assembly re Viet-Nam
It is possible that during the UNGA consideration of the Ceylonese resolution on human rights in South Viet-Nam2 certain political suggestions regarding Viet-Nam may be made by other delegations. If any formal proposals are made they would, of course, be referred to the Department by USUN for instructions.

It may well be, however, that political suggestions or comments regarding Viet-Nam may be made asobiter dicta in speeches to the General Assembly or during corridor conversations. It would seem desirable that we have approved lines of reply for U.S. representatives to use at their discretion to insure that U.S. views are clearly known before ideas and positions of other delegations crystallize.

The anticipated suggestions from other delegations and proposed U.S. lines of reply are as follows:
____________________________________________________________________________________

Willy Whitten
May 4, 2015 at 10:01 pm
“It may well be, however, that political suggestions or comments regarding Viet-Nam may be made as obiter dicta in speeches to the General Assembly or during corridor conversations.”
— DOCUMENT 164

The Commission considered Stombaugh’s testimony of “probative value,” the report stated.
Stombaugh was careful to qualify some of his key opinions. He said he was “unable to render an opinion that the fibers which he found in the bag had probably come from the blanket.” At other times he said, “All I would say here is that it is possible;” and “the possibility exists, these fibers could have come from this blanket.”~Article above

What we have here is the distinction between “Probative” and “Positive” evidence. As was too often the case the Warren Commission asserted ‘positive’ value to what was actually only ‘probative’ value to evidence and testimonies.

This is the difference between “reasonable doubt” and “unreasonable certainty”, between ‘supposition’ and proven fact. And this is yet another instance of the WC failing to actually prove what they claim to have proven.
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CROSSTALK
Synchronization of Putative Gunshots with Events in Dealey Plaza

The point I wish to make in conclusion is that the NRC panel’s reliance on a single instance of crosstalk, the Double Decker, does not establish asynchrony between the sounds identified as gunshots and the time of the assassination. As a consequence, the acoustical identification of the assassination gunfire on the Dallas Police recordings has yet to suffer a substantial challenge.~ Dr. Donald B. Thomashttp://www.oocities.org/whiskey99a/dbt2002.html
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“In 1978 the House Select Committee on Assassinations was presented with acoustical evidence that multiple shooters had been involved in the murder of President John F. Kennedy. During the hearing, staff members played a tape recording for the Committee with the explanation that they were about to hear a rifle shot fired from the Grassy Knoll. After listening to this tape the ranking Republican member of the Committee, Representative Samuel Devine of Ohio, rose in the chamber to declare that he had a great deal of experience with firearms and familiarity with rifle fire. He knew a gunshot when he heard one, he said, and the sound alleged to be from the Grassy Knoll could be many things, but it was clearly not a rifle shot. The staff then explained to Mr. Devine that the tape recording was of a test shot fired from the Grassy Knoll that summer; not the Dallas Police tape from 1963. The incident suggests two things. First, that one cannot determine that a recorded sound is or is not gunfire merely by listening with the naked ear. Secondly, it suggests that Congressman Devine may not have been completely open-minded to the concept under investigation by his Committee.
[…]
When the House Select Committee on Assassinations was first confronted with this evidence, they asked the Acoustical Society of America for a short list of the top acoustics laboratories in this country. At the top of the list was the expert consulting firm of Bolt, Baranek & Newman (BBN)of Cambridge, Massachusettes. They had done the Watergate tapes for the Ervin Committee and the acoustics study of the Kent State shooting for the Department of Justice. These experts determined that the assassination gunfire was on the Dallas police tapes and they were the experts who found the “fingerprint” of a gunshot from the Grassy Knoll.

Because that finding was politically incorrect, and because there was an element of uncertainty with regard to the alleged grassy knoll shot, a second expert opinion was sought. Back to the short list, the next laboratory was the Computer Science Department of Queens College, New York, where Professor Mark Weiss and his assistant Arnold Aschkenasy wrote computer programs with sonar applications for the military. They had also published on methods for detecting and separating real sounds from noisy backgrounds. Using the principles of sonar analysis (echo location) they eliminated the cause of the uncertainty and concurred that there was scientific evidence of a shot from the Grassy Knoll on the police tapes.

So, if expertise is what one requires, the top acoustic experts agree that there was scientifically valid evidence for a shot from the Grassy Knoll. Moreover, there has never been a direct challenge to the acoustical evidence, or its analysis, or the methods which were used to determine that shots were present on the police tapes.”.~Dr. Donald B. Thomashttp://www.whokilledjfk.net/hear_no_evil.htm
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By Carol Hewett
“It’s curious that no one seems to have mentioned this characteristic in connection with the John F. Kennedy assassination, in which both the number and direction of shots fired are still debated. If a silencer was used in combination with another, unsilenced rifle, witnesses located in different parts of the caravan and Dealey Plaza would have heard the shots coming from different directions. Unanimity would have been impossible on the subject of the gunfire’s origin.” Jim Hougan, Spooks (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1978.)
There has been no consideration given by the research community over the past 30 years regarding the possible use of silencers in the JFK assassination. This article hopes to remedy that intriguing possibility. Both conspiracy theorists and lone gun proponents at least agree on one point: that there are differing opinions amongst Dealey Plaza witnesses as to just how many shots were fired on November 22, 1963. All witnesses presumed that having “heard” a given number of shots, then there must have been an equal number of actual shots so as to coincide with what they heard, whether it be 2, 3 or 4 sounds or even more than 4 as some witnesses have claimed.

If there were 4 or more shots, then it follows that there was more than one gun for even the lone assassin proponents agree that Oswald could not have fired off 4 shots within the given time frame generally accepted. Consequently, a great deal of effort has been expended pinpointing the location of the witnesses in order to determine which ones may have had a better vantage point for discerning the “real” number of shots. For a brief time it was hoped that the dictabelt evidence would settle the matter once and for all. The HSCA spent a significant amount of time and money grappling with this acoustical evidence but to no avail.

Dr. John M. Newman, has chosen America’s actions in relation to the ascendency to power of Castro as the focus of the first in his multi-volume work, The Assassination of President Kennedy: Where Angels Tread Lightly.
More information on Where Angel’s Tread Lightly may be found here:http://aarclibrary.org/publication-spotlight-where-angels-tread-lightly/
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William (Rip) Robertson was born in Texas. He joined the United States Marines and served in the Pacific during the Second World War.

After the war Robertson joined the Central Intelligence Agency. He was employed as a counter-intelligence agent and was involved in what became known as Executive Action (a plan to remove unfriendly foreign leaders from power). This including a coup d’état that overthrew the Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 after he introduced land reforms and nationalized the United Fruit Company.

Robertson became a CIA outcast after he was found responsible for ordering the bombing of a British ship which he had mistakenly identified as Russian. He moved to Nicaragua where he worked as an adviser to the government of Anastasio Somoza.

Robertson returned to the CIA before the Bay of Pigs operation. He commanded the supply ship Barbara J and disobeyed orders by landing in Cuba with Brigade 2506. Afterwards Roberson became a member of staff at CIA’s JM WAVE station in Miami.http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKrobertsonW.htm
Rip Robertson Signals Kellerman and Greer
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Documents in the Truman Library show that nine days after Kennedy was assassinated, Truman sketched out in handwritten notes what he wanted to say in the op-ed. He noted, among other things, that the CIA had worked as he intended only “when I had control.”

In Truman’s view, misuse of the CIA began in February 1953, when his successor, Dwight Eisenhower, named Allen Dulles CIA Director. Dulles’ forte was overthrowing governments (in current parlance, “regime change”), and he was quite good at it. With coups in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954) under his belt, Dulles was riding high in the late Fifties and moved Cuba to the top of his to-do list.

Accustomed to the carte blanche given him by Eisenhower, Dulles was offended when young President Kennedy came on the scene and had the temerity to ask questions about the Bay of Pigs adventure, which had been set in motion under Eisenhower. When Kennedy made it clear he would NOT approve the use of U.S. combat forces, Dulles reacted with disdain and set out to mousetrap the new President.

Coffee-stained notes handwritten by Allen Dulles were discovered after his death and reported by historian Lucien S. Vandenbroucke. They show how Dulles drew Kennedy into a plan that was virtually certain to require the use of U.S. combat forces. In his notes Dulles explains that, “when the chips were down,” the new President would be forced by “the realities of the situation” to give whatever military support was necessary “rather than permit the enterprise to fail.”

Additional detail came from a March 2001 conference on the Bay of Pigs, which included CIA operatives, retired military commanders, scholars, and journalists. Daniel Schorr told National Public Radio that he had gained one new perception as a result of the “many hours of talk and heaps of declassified secret documents:
“It was that the CIA overlords of the invasion, Director Allen Dulles and Deputy Richard Bissell had their own plan on how to bring the United States into the conflict…What they expected was that the invaders would establish a beachhead…and appeal for aid from the United States…
“The assumption was that President Kennedy, who had emphatically banned direct American involvement, would be forced by public opinion to come to the aid of the returning patriots. American forces, probably Marines, would come in to expand the beachhead.
“In fact, President Kennedy was the target of a CIA covert operation that collapsed when the invasion collapsed,” added Schorr.

The “enterprise” which Dulles said could not fail was, of course, the overthrow of Fidel Castro. After mounting several failed operations to assassinate him, this time Dulles meant to get his man, with little or no attention to what the Russians might do in reaction. Kennedy stuck to his guns, so to speak; fired Dulles and his co-conspirators a few months after the abortive invasion in April 1961; and told a friend that he wanted to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds.”

The outrage was mutual, and when Kennedy himself was assassinated on November 22, 1963, it must have occurred to Truman that the disgraced Dulles and his outraged associates might not be above conspiring to get rid of a President they felt was soft on Communism—and, incidentally, get even.http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=15170
. . . . . .Willy Whitten
May 9, 2015 at 9:07 am

Sure Mr Morrow, I agree the war criminal Truman was accusing the CIA of killing Kennedy. And I agree that Ray McGovern makes very good points in his article that back that up. But these are both limited perspectives. Not necessarily to say intentional ‘Limited Hangouts’ but to that effect at any rate.

Dulles was not a power unto himself, the CIA is not a power unto itself, although it is connected to the Money Power – the financial elite, it is not simply symbiotic. The relationship is hierarchical and the Money Power is on top, the “Wall Street Lawyers” (Dulles) work for them, and if they dare do anything without approval their heads will roll.

There was a larger consensus behind the Kennedy assassination. It was a systemic wide one, and it was okay’d from the very top of the foodchain… In my most humble opinion.

American Military Leaders Urged President Truman not to Drop the Atomic Bomb
The Joint Chiefs of Staff never formally studied the decision and never made an official recommendation to the President. Brief informal discussions may have occurred, but no record even of these exists. There is no record whatsoever of the usual extensive staff work and evaluation of alternative options by the Joint Chiefs, nor did the Chiefs ever claim to be involved. (See p. 322, Chapter 26)

In official internal military interviews, diaries and other private as well as public materials, literally every top U.S. military leader involved subsequently stated that the use of the bomb was not dictated by military necessity.http://www.colorado.edu/AmStudies/lewis/2010/atomicdec.htm
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Roger that Willy, I here fore acknowledge that you have indeed posted an impressive set of senior military leaders that said the bombings were not necessary or had no military purpose.

Were they necessary? Of course not. I agree here.

Did they have a military purpose? Judging from the way the Joint Chiefs seem to have been left out of this decision loop I’d say the bombing came more from Truman than from the military. This in it’s self would indicate a lack of military purpose I think.

However, I don’t think you can argue that the bombings didn’t speed up the end of the war. And more important this canceled our plans of invading Japan, which would have been probably a bigger tragedy than the bombs. “A study done for Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s staff by William Shockley estimated that conquering Japan would cost 1.7–4 million American casualties, including 400,000–800,000 fatalities, and five to ten million Japanese fatalities. The key assumption was large-scale participation by civilians in the defense of Japan.[2]”

Now when something speeds up the end of a war and drops a bloody invasion plan I don’t see how this can be called “not military”. It served this military purpose even if it wasn’t the original intent.

Eye to eye Willy, I wish they hadn’t dropped those bombs. Had I been a American soldier waiting to invade Japan I’d want them to drop every thing they had. So we have different views.

ReplyWilly WhittenYour comment is awaiting moderation.
May 13, 2015 at 12:58 pm
“However, I don’t think you can argue that the bombings didn’t speed up the end of the war…”~Bill Clarke

By a couple of weeks at most. As the top Military chiefs have already noted, the Japanese were ready to surrender. That would mean that no ground invasion would have been necessary.

You can be wrong and remain “right” in your own mind Bill, as usual.
\\][//This reply from Bill is absolutely schizophrenic! He admits there was not military purpose to dropping the A-bombs on Japan, but then argues that it sped up the end of the war – which is EXACTLY what the chief military officers disputed AFTER the bombs were dropped and AFTER the end of the war. WTF?
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The Evidence is the Conspiracy By David Josephs — Posted August 21, 2014

Given what we now know about what Oswald could have known, and that we agree that he must have had a plan, even if only created three days before on Tuesday once he learns JFK is coming to Dallas and passing under his place of employment… It stretches the bounds of credibility to accept that this plan includes not knowing when the limo is to pass by and in turn having to be in a position to use the rifle he took such pains to bring to as well as hide in the TSBD. None of Oswald’s necessary activities are offered by the WCR to support such a plan. It’s all tautological: He must have been there because he had to be in order to fire the shots.

The Evidence is the Conspiracy…

when I originally offered the concept in August of 2010 on the Spartacus Education Forum it was well received and completely blows the WCR scenario out of the water… it remains impossible for the events to have happened the way they were described and not even possible to be considered by any thinking person.

As Vince Bugliosi says, although he wishes you conclude the opposite, this is indeed the most complicated murder of all time, and the WCR proves it to be so. Talking about the “evidence” as if it indicates anything related to the assassination is a hoax and a cruel joke on anyone who continues to play the game… The magician’s trick of getting you to look here while the deception is happening over there…http://www.ctka.net/2014/The%20evidence%20is%20the%20conspiracy.html
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Photon is an Oswald doppelganger I have seen proof of this in his FBI files! “Photon” was the code name of an agent who looked almost exactly like Oswald.
I am following several leads at the moment, hoping to find out the actual name and identity of the agent ‘Photon’, and whether he was the one killed in the Dallas PD garage, or if he was the one who was spirited away from the theater.
-Torus V

The Century of the Self
This 4-part BBC mini-series aired in 2002, tracing the development of Freudian psychology and its exploitation by advertising to manipulate people into wanting things they don’t need. The documentary describes the impact of Freud’s theories on the perception of the human mind, and the ways public relations agencies and politicians have used this during the last 100 years for their engineering of consent. Among the central characters are Freud himself and his nephew Edward Bernays, who was the first to use psychological techniques in advertising. He is widely regarded as the father of the modern public relations industry.http://whowhatwhy.org/2015/05/11/outside-the-box-video-series-the-century-of-the-self-3/
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Jim Braden aka Eugene Hale Brading
Jim Braden was taken into custody as a suspicous person at Dealey Plaza shortly after the assassination.
A suspicious elevator operator in the Dal Tex building called him to the attention of Sheriff Deputy Lummie Lewis, who took Braden in and took a statement from him before releasing him.http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5983
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Tippit was shot at a little after 1pm and TF Bowley said he arrived at 1.10 and officer Tippit was shot . cab driver Scoggins placed the

Warren Burroughs was assistant manager of the Texas Theater in Oak Cliff. … “The police cars were racing up and down Jefferson with their sirens blasting and … When the police arrived Brewer accompanied the officers into the cinema … He also testified that Oswald came downstairs and purchased some popcorn at 1.15.http://22november1963.org.uk/did-lee-harvey-oswald-kill-officer-jd-tippit
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I didn’t shoot John Kennedy. … I didn’t even know Gov. John Connally had been shot. … I don’t own a rifle. … I didn’t tell Buell Wesley Frazier anything about bringing back some curtain rods. … I did carry a package to the Texas School Book Depository. I carried my lunch, a sandwich and fruit … I had nothing personal against John Kennedy.”~Lee Harvey Oswald

12:11.3 pm 15-531 Are you having them contain the block surrounding the building. 531-15 Yes, we are sealing the building until it can be searched. 15-531 Extend it out to include two or three block area. 9-531 The wanted person in this is a slender white male about thirty, five feet ten, one sixty five, carrying what looked to be a 30-30 or some type of Winchester. 531-9 It was a rifle? 9-531 Yes, a rifle. .

Testimony Of Miss Victoria Elizabeth Adams
The testimony of Miss Victoria Elizabeth ADAMS was taken at 2:15 p.m., on April 7, 1964, in the office of the U.S. attorney, 301 Post Office Building, Bryan and Ervay Streets, Dallas, Tex., by Mr. David W. BELIN, assistant counsel of the President’s Commission.http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/adams_v.htm

“In the summary memo, the FBI agent who supposedly showed the exhibit to Wright was identified as Bardwell Odum. In November 2001, Aguilar and Thompson visited the retired agent who told his interviewers that he never took any bullet around to show to any Parkland witnesses – and since he knew Wright well, he would have recalled the interview.
Further, if that event had happened, Odum would have had to file a 302. Aguilar had studied the report file in sequential order and none were missing, indicating that Odum never filed a 302 presumably because he never showed the bullet to Wright.

“His [Odum] name is seldom mentioned by researchers, yet he was probably the most assiduous investigator involved in the 1963- 1964 investigation. However, despite his deep involvement, he did not testify before the Warren Commission.”
“It was between 1:45 pm and 2:00 pm that Odum and Day made the rifle delivery to Lt. Day’s office at Main and Harwood Streets in downtown Dallas. At the very same time, according to SA Hosty, Bardwell was at the Texas Theater witnessing the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald. Hosty describes the scene “When the officers escorted Oswald out of the theater, a mob had already formed. Word had spread that a killer had been arrested. …in addition to Barrett (SA Bob Barrett), Agents Bardwell Odum and Jim Swinford were standing in the back of the theater at the time of the arrest..”http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/T%20Disk/Third-Fourth%20Decade%20The/Item%2001.pdf
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Keep an eye out for this guy: Jeffrey Sundberg, saying that the Bell and Howell camera, by his calculations, should not have been able to reproduce this degree of image penetration on the film.
What is meant by the Bell and Howell camera? Has Sundberg been given access to the actual camera that Zapruder used? Zavada gives a detailed discription of the claw mechanism that caused the ‘ghost images’, but there are no calculations showing how off-pull this mechanism was, other than the actual results on the film. So where is Sundberg getting the integers for his calculations from but the film itself, and the analysis by Zavada? I have the suspicion that Sundberg’s hypothesis is flawed out of the gate (no pun intended – but perhaps applicable).
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Because of the standard of western jurisprudence that a defendant is innocent until proven guilty, I will not accept as viable anything anyone claims Oswald said without double corroboration by others present.

Especially concerning those in law enforcement who have shown themselves either utterly incompetent or suspect of involvement in setting up Oswald as the patsy he claimed he was.

Too many instances of planting, destroying or defacing evidence has surfaced in this case to take authority’s word for anything.
I think an overall assessment of this case exonerates Oswald as a shooter, let alone THE shooter.

Were those who pulled the triggers in Dealey Plaza the only ones to bear responsibility? Or were those who planned and facilitated the murder the more responsible?

You are a Jesuit, are you not Photon? You should understand your cult’s own theology. It was the Demiurge, knowing predestination who instigated within Cain the enraged jealousy of his brother; by refusing Cain’s well intended offering. You should have realized by now that “the devil” is just a stagehand in your god’s stage production.
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“The ends justify the means” is a Jesuit maxim. Loyola was just another of the legions of history’s mad men. It is claimed that the quote is misattributed, but the secrecy of the Jesuits is too profound to take that idea seriously when their MO historically has consistently been the application of the maxim, ‘the ends justify the means’.
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It has been proven again and again on so many aspects of the case that Lee Harvey Oswald is not guilty of shooting anybody on November 22, 1963.

We have gone through the fraudulent chains of custody for the evidence, including the Magic Bullet, the “snipers nest” bullets, the lack of evidence on the mail ordered guns, the lack of chains of custody for the Tippet shells. The fact that Oswald was down on the 2nd floor of the TBDB at the time the shots were fired. The fact that Oswald was buying popcorn in the Texas Theater at the time Tippit was killed.

But Oswald suffers double jeopardy, triple jeopardy, quadruple jeopardy, perpetual jeopardy; tried endlessly, time and again with each new thread on this forum. Each time, resetting the scales as if nothing has ever been settled before.

The prosecutors rely on compartmentalization. They rely on the jury forgetting that Oswald has been exonerated countless times before. Everything goes down the Memory Hole and the ‘process’ begins again, just like the ‘Peace Process’ in Palestine, it is endless on purpose so there is never a resolution; and the historical map of that land from 1946 to the present, shows the truth of my assertion.

It seems that it has come to the point that there is no longer a Sense of Justice in the western world, just like there is no Sense for Liberty here in the land of Full Spectrum Dominance.

Jean you argued that the wound was in the back of the neck 6 inches below the Mastoid Process. You point to that “autopsy photo” where the skin has been pushed up to claim that this and the technical term are the same.
I and others argued that the wound was exactly in the spot shown on Boswell’s face sheet from the autopsy; ie; the third thoracic vertebrae.

Put another way you were arguing that the back wound was where Ford and Specter claimed: “C7/T1″ (the base of the neck)
That is about 6 inches higher than T3.

The placement of the wound is crucial for the Magic Bullet theory. Just like the denial of the entry wound to the throat is crucial to the Magic Bullet theory. This is why Jean clings to both false propositions. The Magic Bullet theory proposes that the bullet entered JFK’s back and exited the throat, then continued forward and struck John Connally in the back came out of his right nipple continuing on to strike Connally’s wrist, and then ending in his left thigh.

The physical evidence goes against the theory. The ballistic evidence goes against the theory. The lack of chain of custody ruins the theory. The testimony of the witnesses goes against the theory. The photographic evidence goes against the theory. The failure to track the wounds by dissection destroys the the theory.
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Jack Crichton (1916-2007) is not exactly a household name, but when you travel with the Family of Secrets, your profile lies low. Crichton is one of the fine upstanding pillars of the Military Industrial Complex who played a pivotal role in the Murder of John F Kennedy on November 22, 1963 in Dealey Plaza.

Crichton made his money in the Texas oil business where he developed a strong relationship with George Herbert Walker Bush – the very same George Bush of the CIA referenced in J Edgar Hoover’s damning letter concerning the future president’s involvement in the Kennedy murder.

Earle Cabell (1906-1975), another key player in the Kennedy murder while he was mayor of Dallas, went to school with Crichton who subsequently joined the OSS during World War 2. Afterwards, he had many relationships with America’s leading MIC elements such as DuPont, General Dynamics, Kuhn Loeb, Clint Murchison, and other luminaries of the far right.

His most significant relationship in connection to the Kennedy murder was with George Bush’s Operation 40 team which planned a fake attack on Guantanamo Bay as a cover for its covert plans against the President. Both men were in Dealey Plaza at the time of the murder, with Crichton having walked from the Adolphus Hotel to Elm Street.

In addition to his business interests and role as mentor and confidante of Bush, Sr, Crichton also commanded the US Army Reserve 488th Military Intelligence unit stationed in Texas at the time of the Kennedy assassination….

“In the case of the JFK assassination, I wish to focus on two men who functioned as part of the communications network of the Office of Emergency Planning (OEP), the agency renamed in 1968 as the Office of Emergency Preparedness (to which McCord was attached), and renamed again in 1982 as the National Program Office (for which Oliver North was the action officer). [11]

These two men (there are others) are Winston Lawson, the Secret Service advance man who from the lead car of the motorcade was in charge of the Secret Service radio channels operating in the motorcade; and Jack Crichton, the army intelligence reserve officer who with Deputy Dallas Police Chief George Lumpkin selected the Russian interpreter for Marina Oswald’s first (and falsified) FBI interview. [12]

Lawson has drawn the critical attention of JFK researchers, both for dubious actions he took before and during the assassination, and also for false statements he made after it (some of them under oath). For example, Lawson reported after the assassination that motorcycles were deployed on “the right and left flanks of the President’s car” (17 WH 605). On the morning of November 22, however, the orders had been changed (3 WH 244), so that the motorcycles rode instead, as Lawson himself testified to the Warren Commission, “just back of the President’s car” (4 WH 338; cf. 21 WH 768-70). Captain Lawrence of the Dallas Police testified that that the proposed side escorts were redeployed to the rear on Lawson’s own instructions (7 WH 580-81; cf. 18 WH 809, 21 WH 571). This would appear to have left the President more vulnerable to a possible crossfire.

Early on November 22, at Love Field, Lawson installed, in what would become the lead car, the base radio whose frequencies were used by all Secret Service agents on the motorcade. This radio channel, operated by the White House Communications Agency (WHCA), was used for some key decisions before and after the assassination, yet its records, unlike those of the Dallas Police Department (DPD) Channels One and Two, were never made available to the Warren Commission, or any subsequent investigation. The tape was not withheld because it was irrelevant; on the contrary, it contained very significant information.

The WHCA actually reports to this day on its website that the agency was “a key player in documenting the assassination of President Kennedy.” [13] However it is not clear for whom this documentation was conducted, or why it was not made available to the Warren Commission, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, or the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB). [14] It should have been.
[…]
Jack Crichton is of interest because he, along with DPD Deputy Chief George Lumpkin of the 488th Army Intelligence Reserve unit, was responsible for choosing a Russian interpreter for Marina Oswald from the right-wing Russian community. This man was Ilya Mamantov, who translated for Marina Oswald at her first DPD interview on November 22. What she allegedly said in Russian at this interview was later used to bolster what I have called the “phase one” story, still promoted from some CIA sources, that Russia and/or Cuba were behind the assassination.

As summarized by the FBI, Mamantov’s account of Marina’s Russian testimony was as follows:

MARINA OSWALD advised that LEE HARVEY OSWALD owned a rifle which he used in Russia about two years ago. She observed what she presumed to be the same rifle in a blanket in the garage at [Ruth Paine’s residence]…. MARINA OSWALD stated that on November 22, she had been shown a rifle in the Dallas Police Department…. She stated that it was a dark color like the one that she had seen, but she did not recall the sight. [20]

These specific details – that Marina said she had seen a rifle that was dark and scopeless – were confirmed in an affidavit (signed by Marina and Mamantov, 24 WH 219) that was taken by DPD officer B.L. Senkel (24 WH 249). They were confirmed again by Ruth Paine, who witnessed the Mamantov interview, (3 WH 82). They were confirmed again the next night in an interview of Marina by the Secret Service, translated by Mamantov’s close friend Peter Gregory. But a Secret Service transcript of the interview reveals that the source of these details was Gregory, not Marina:”~Scotthttp://www.voltairenet.org/article187504.html
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‘The Loan Gunman Theory’ of the JFK Assassination turns out to be the least viable of the major themes that can develop from the evidence and data that has been discovered and revealed. It cannot withstand the slightest scrutiny.

Taken together the evidence strongly indicates that the assassination was a coup d’etat by the military industrial complex.
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“This book is not about assassinations, at least not solely about assassinations. It is not just another book about who murdered President Kennedy or how or why. It is a book about power, about who really controls the United States policies, especially foreign policies. It is a book about the process of control through the manipulation of the American presidency and the presidential election process. The objective of the book is to expose the clandestine, secret, tricky methods and weapons used for this manipulation, and to reveal the degree to which these have been hidden from the American public. Assassinations are only one of many techniques used in this control process. They have been important only in the sense that they are the ultimate method used in the control of the election process. Viewed in this way, an understanding of what happened to John or Robert Kennedy becomes more important because it leads to a total understanding of what has happened to our country, and to us, since 1960. But the important thing to understand is the control and the power and all of the clandestine methods put together. Much of the information in the book has been published before in the magazines Computer and Automation and People and the Pursuit of Truth, both edited and published by Edmund C. Berkeley, Newtonville, Mass. The material on assassination and other events covered is based on evidence collected by the author individually or through the Committee to Investigate Assassinations. References to documentation of this evidence are given throughout the book.”~Richard E. Sprague

I get the distinct impression this Richard E. Sprague is a nom de plume for Richard A. Sprague, who was forced to sign, The Secrecy Oath the author signed after Robert Blakey took over the HSCA, and correspondence between the author and various committee members.
(see: Appendix)
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“Permit me at this moment an instructive digression. It is by now well established that Kennedy in 1963 was concerned enough by “the threat of far-right treason” that he urgently persuaded Hollywood director John Frankenheimer “to turn [the novel] Seven Days in May into a movie.” [28] In this book, a charismatic superior officer, Air Force General James Mattoon Scott, intend[s] to stage a coup d’état …. According to the plan, an undisclosed Army combat unit known as ECOMCON (Emergency COMmunications CONtrol) will seize control of the country’s telephone, radio, and television networks, while the conspiracy directs the military and its allies in Congress and the media from “Mount Thunder” (a continuity of government base based on Mount Weather).

It is no secret also that in 1963 Kennedy had aroused major right-wing dissatisfaction, largely because of signs of his increasing rapprochement with the Soviet Union. The plot of the book and movie reflects the concern of liberals at the time about generals like General Edwin Walker, who had resigned in 1961 after Kennedy criticized his political activities in the Army. (Walker had given his troops John Birch Society literature, along with the names of right-wing candidates to vote for.) [29] We can assume however that Kennedy had no firm evidence of a Mount Weather conspiracy: if he had, it is unlikely his response would have just been to sponsor a fictionalized movie.”~Peter Dale Scotthttp://www.voltairenet.org/article187504.html
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No, Willy, you did. I have never in my life said the wound was “in the back of the neck.”

“Put another way you were arguing that the back wound was where Ford and Specter claimed: “C7/T1″ (the base of the neck)”

No again, I don’t care what Ford or Specter claimed. I can see the wound in the photo, and I agree with the HSCA medical panel, which put it at c. T1. If the wound had been as low as the worksheet has it, “it would probably have penetrated and collapsed the right lung”:

“You point to that “autopsy photo” where the skin has been pushed up…”

Those are normal folds at the back of the neck with smooth skin below:

____________Willy Whitten May 21, 2015 at 1:21 am

“No, Willy, you did. I have never in my life said the wound was “in the back of the neck.”~Jean Davison

But T1 IS the back of the neck, it is right at the collar.

So you are now saying that Burkley lied on the JFK Death certificate when he placed the back wound at T3?

“Those are normal folds at the back of the neck with smooth skin below”~Jean

Balderdash! Those are “normal folds” only if the head is pulled back (as in this shot) or if looking straight up while standing in life.

You are not going to get this past this me Jean, as an artist I know anatomy in movement very well. Not only has the head been pulled back in that photograph, but the skin of the back has been pushed up towards the neck.
Any but biased eyes can see that clearly.

So the “experts” on the HSCA medical panel, know better than Dr. Burkley himself who had the body of John Kennedy right before him.
Amazing.
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The simplest and perhaps most elegant proof of conspiracy which demolishes the Warren Report involves a correlation of what the Warren Commission claimed was the path of Commission exhibit #399, the “magic bullet,” with the holes in the back of the President’s jacket and shirt. Contradicting the Commission’s claim that a bullet entered the back of the President’s neck are the positions of two overlapping bullet holes, one five and three-eighths inches down from the collar line of the back of the President’s suit jacket, the evidence, reproduced below, appeared in the FBI’s Supplemental Report to the Warren Commission of January 13, 1964. This Supplemental Report, as well as the initial FBI Summary Report of December 9, 1963, did not appear in the 26 volumes of Warren Commission exhibits.http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/HWNAU/EMSappIII.html
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Mr, Klein: “And with respect to the wounds to the President’s back, what did the panel learn from the clothing?

Dr. Baden: “In the jacket and underlying shirt there is a perforation of the fabric that corresponds directly with the location of the perforation of the skin of the right upper back that the panel concluded was an entrance gunshot perforation that entered the back of the president. This is correspondingly seen in the shirt beneath.”
__________
At this point Mr Klein inexplicably drops the line of questioning, and rather than ask what the locations were of these perforations in fabric and the skin of the president, and changes course by introducing X-rays of the front of Kennedy’s throat and chest!
__________
The locations of these perforations in fabric and the skin of the president were five and three-eighths inches down from the collar line of the back of the President’s suit jacket. ( FBI’s Supplemental Report to the Warren Commission of January 13, 1964.)
This corresponds with Dr. Burkley’s Death certificate notation of the back wound at T3, and Boswell’s face sheet showing the back wound at T3.

I will note as well that all of the discussion that follows in Baden’s testimony involving T1, has to do with the throat wound – NOT the back wound. So whatever damage described in the X-rays to T1 are concerned with the throat wound. The medical panel may have decided this wound was an exit wound but they in fact never saw the throat wound in its original condition. Those who did described it as an entry wound.
One will notice the way that even Dr. Baden expresses uncertainty, pointing out that “The Track wasn’t dissected out. We have to speculate from other sources” … “It might have struck the transverse process of the first thoracic vertebra but we cannot prove this.”http://jfkfacts.org/assassination/news/how-much-jfk-assassination-information-is-still-secret/#comment-762688
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Dr. BADEN: Pathology is that area of medicine concerned with the investigation and evaluation of natural disease and other abnormalities in the human body; and forensic pathology specifically refers and relates to investigation of unnatural death and to areas of pathology and medicine that are concerned with legal aspects of death and injury, and ability to present these materials in courts and other jurisdictions . (pg 180-185)

Dr. BADEN. President Kennedy died as a result of two gunshot wounds of the head, brain, back and neck areas of the body. (pg 185)

Mr. KLEIN. Doctor, do you recognize that drawing?
Dr. BADEN. Yes, I do.
Mr. KLEIN. What is that drawing of?
Dr. BADEN. This a drawing done by Miss Dox of one of the
autopsy photographs taken just prior to the autopsy of President
Kennedy.
Mr. KLEIN. What does that particular drawing portray?
Dr. BADEN. This particular drawing shows the back of the President and the head where I am pointing to, and a perforation of the skin of the right upper back with a centimeter ruler alongside .
Mr. KLEIN. Doctor, does this diagram fairly and accurately represent the location of the wound in the President’s upper right back?Dr. BADEN. *Yes, it does.* (pg 187)
*This is disingenuous to the point of a lie. As Baden testifies later, the backwound aligned with the holes in Kennedy’s jacket and shirt, that wound was 5 3/8ths inches from the collar. This drawing gives the impression that it is no more than an inch and a half from the collar. This is the deception this drawing and photograph are meant to maintain.http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol1/pdf/HSCA_Vol1_0907_5_Baden.pdf
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The answer to this question is of course, dependent on the pose and posture of the human in consideration. On a male human standing some 5′ 10″ to 6′, the hand would be approximately 30 to 35 inches away from the face if the person were standing erect with the arms relaxed at the side.

As the arms, neck, shoulders, and elbows are articulated; depending on the pose and posture, a hand can be any distance from the face as well as literally touching it.

This may seem absurdly jejune to point out these most obvious facts, but in light of the photograph & drawing of President Kennedy’s back wound with the rubber gloved hands holding a ruler, it is apparently necessary to start from such a elementary discussion.

It is obvious from viewing this picture, that the body is not in a pose that represents the one Kennedy was in while sitting in the limousine when the bullet hit him; his head was not leaning back as if he were looking into the clouds, his shoulders were not raised with his elbows above his head – as depicted in this post mortem photograph. Kenned was sitting straight up, his shoulders relaxed and his right elbow leaning on the door of the car when he was shot. Even after he was shot he never assumed a pose even remotely like the one in this “autopsy photo” his neck was extended forward, his hands grasping at his throat and his elbows slightly lower than has shoulders. His whole upper body was leaning slightly forward until he slumped to his left towards his wife.

This is why it is disingenuous for Dr. Baden to casually answer “yes it does” to Mr Klein’s question about the autopsy drawing/photo. It in fact is NOT a fair and accurate representation of where the back wound was located, despite the fact that the drawing is true to a real and actual photograph.
Dr Baden had to have been aware that this answer of his being unqualified as to the pose and posture was disingenuous, because later in his testimony he says that the wound on the back lined up with the holes in the jacket and the shirt – five and three-eighths inches below the collar line.
The distance in the autopsy photo gives the impression of not more than an inch from the collar line.

It is also disingenuous for Jean Davison, to claim that this image is a fair and accurate representation of where the back wound was on these pages.
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Willy Whitten – May 28, 2015 at 12:48 pm
“CTs point to anomalies (oddities, things that “look funny”) in the record as though they are clues, but clues lead to a story that makes sense. These don’t. That indicates, imo, that they are meaningless “noise” or simply coincidences.”~Jean Davison – May 28, 2015 at 10:17 am

. . . . .
“but clues lead to a story that makes sense”~Jean

That’s right Jean, but you spin this backwards because the “things that look funny” are facts that don’t make sense as far as the official story, that is why they are called “anomalies” because they do not make sense with the official narrative. This is the reason apologists for the official narrative try to hand-wave these facts that don’t add up to the story told by the official narrative. This is why you fall back to Coincidence Theory and call it meaningless noise.

In the fall of 1962, the CIA had a problem. The Cuban missile crisis had ended with a peaceful resolution. Most Americans had been greatly relieved. But the organization that the CIA considered to be the single most popular Cuban exile organization was very upset with the American government.
That organization was the Revolutionary Student Directorate, usually referred to by the initials
“DRE” representing its name in Spanish. The DRE was the direct descendent of a Cuban student group founded in Cuba with the help of CIA agent David Phillips.
The week after the missile crisis ended the DRE provided information to the Washington Evening Star newspaper that there were still missiles hidden in Cuba.

The story ran with a front page head line. Twelve days later the Secretary-General of the DRE appeared on NBC’s “Today Show” where he once again claimed to have seen, with his own eyes, nuclear missiles hidden in caves and hills in Cuba.
[…]
Joannides and the CIA effectively frustrated the HSCA investigation into whether the Agency had any involvement with those who may have had a hand in bringing about the death of John Kennedy.
Had the Agency told the truth about George Joannides, he would have been called as a critical witness. He would have been deposed and would have likely testified in Executive Session. If they had not delivered the records, the records would have been subpoenaed. I know that Dan and Eddie believe that he ended any effective investigation that they were undertaking. They complained bitterly about it at the time. I should have listened to them.
I can no longer say with confidence, as the HSCA Final Report did, that Oswald had no significant relationship with DRE.
At this point what we know is that the CIA has hidden this information from every investigation into the facts and circumstances surrounding the assassination. Indeed, they have not just hidden the information, they have lied to, at least, both the HSCA and the ARRB. I believe that this rises to the level of probable violation of the law that prohibits impeding the due and proper inquiry of a committee of Congress.
I no longer trust anything that the Agency has told us in regard to the assassination. It lied to the Warren Commission. It lied to the ARRB. It lied to
the HSCA. In admitting that Joannides was employed in a covert capacity as liaison with the HSCA, it has admitted that it violated its charter and ran a domestic covert operation aimed at subverting the HSCA and its investigation.
I do not believe for a minute that records did not exist. They may not now, but they did at one time. Money was involved and money had to be internally documented, even at the Agency. That the Agency would put a material witness in a covert capacity as a filter between the committee staff and the Agency was an outrageous breach of our understanding with the Agency, the Agency’s charter and the laws of this country. As a result, I now believe that we were not able to conduct an appropriate investigation of the CIA.
What the Agency did not give us, none but those involved in the Agency can know for sure. I do not believe any denial offered by the Agency on any point. The law has long followed the rule that if a person lies to you on one point, you may reject all his testimony. The CIA not only lied, it actively subverted the investigation.
It is time that either Congress, or the Justice Department, conduct a real investigation of the CIA. Indeed, in my opinion, it is long past time.
~G. Robert Blakey

Oswald’s Movements During the Assassination
If Carolyn Arnold’s revised account, with its detailed and forceful identification of Oswald, is accurate, Oswald’s movements at the time of the assassination would have been as follows:
Shortly after mid–day, Oswald went from the first floor to the second–floor lunch room.
Oswald was there at about 12:15, when he was seen by Carolyn Arnold.
Shortly afterwards, he went downstairs to the domino room, and saw James Jarman and Harold Norman at around 12:25.
At about 12:31 he went back up to the second–floor lunch room to obtain a soft drink. At the entrance to the lunch room, Oswald encountered a police officer, Marrion Baker, and the building supervisor, Roy Truly.http://22november1963.org.uk/carolyn-arnold-witness-oswald
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“It wasn’t Fritz’s policy to take notes because he tried to get suspects to relax and talk freely.”~Jean Davison

What utter bullshit, the “investigation” was nothing but the setting up of the patsy Lee Harvey Oswald.
Jean, Bill C, and new Bill all have the mindset of pre-Magna Carter Inquisition interrogators. They are the types of personalities that call forth the new dark ages.
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Homer McMahon is one of Doug Horne’s prime witnesses for his Alteration Hypothesis of the Z-film. Get a load of this:

More McMahon testimony, this time Jeremy Gun asks some questions:

JG: Let me try a question?…You are acquainted with the Zapruder film, the film called the Zapruder film? Is this the Zapruder film or a different film?

HM: I haven’t seen it for 35 years. Ah, I never heard Dalcruder at the time. I heard that much, much later.

DH: Do you mean Dalcruder? Did you say Dalcruder?

HM: He did. The man who took the most famous film was Abraham Zapruder.

HM: Abraham Zapruder. I never heard that name, or if I did I don’t remember it.

JG: But right now, you’re not certain whether the film you processed or that you were involved in working with was the Zapruder film…?

HM: Well, I’m told it was the only coverage they had. That that was it. No one else photographed it. They said it was the only film, and I don’t know if it was or if it was the historic film.
[…]
HM: I have senile dementia…I can’t remember really anything. Most of my reflections are what I have recalled and remembered after the fact. In other words, I did it once, and then I recalled it, and remembered it. I don’t know how the mind works, but I do know I am not. I am a recovering drug addict and alcoholic. Do you know what a wet brain is? Well, you’re looking at one. I damn near died. And I’m not a competent witness because I don’t have accurate recall. I don’t have absolute recall.

JG: With regards to the other events that you talked about, what is your sense of how accurate your memory is of that?

HM: I just told you, I don’t have a full deck. I don’t know how (ha) I figured I am presenting anything here. This is not…at the time I did it I was not, I was not impaired, but I later became impaired. So whether you are talking to a reliable witness or not, that’s up for you to decide. (ha)
____________________________________________________________

The Essence of the Situation is one of General Delusion
Mass confusion, a grand contusion of mind and brain on a massive scale. An unhinged pathological society, mass hallucinating a false reality via the electronic voodoo ritual of watching television.
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Paul Ostermayr aka Paul May was a film producer with Universum Film AG, and his wife Olga, née Wernhard.

After secondary school in Feldkirch, he entered to film industry and trained in film laboratory work. He became a film editor in 1930 and assistant director in 1935. His first film as director was Edelweißkönig, in 1938.

After the Second World War, he adopted the pseudonym Paul May. His greatest successes were Und ewig singen die Wälder (1959), Via Mala (1961) from the book by John Knittel, and Scotland Yard vs. Dr. Mabuse (1963) with Peter van Eyck. He also directed for television.

The Waters of Knowledge versus the Waters of Uncertainty:
Mass Denial in the Assassination of President Kennedy
By E. Martin Schotz

Introduction

My task this afternoon is to explore with you the reasons the American people do not know who killed President Kennedy and why. In order to do this we will have to deal with three interdependent conspiracies which developed in the course of the assassination and its aftermath. These are:
the criminal conspiracy to murder the President by a cabal of militarists at the highest echelons of power in the United States;
the conspiracy which aided and abetted these murderers after the fact, by covering for the assassins, also a true criminal conspiracy involving an extremely wide circle of government officials across the entire political spectrum and at all levels of government; and
a conspiracy of ignorance, denial, confusion, and silence which has pervaded our entire public.
The major focus of my talk today is this third conspiracy on the part of the public, which includes our so-called “critical community.” I want to show you that our failure to know is not based on any lack of data or because the data is ambiguous. It is all extremely simple and obvious.[1] Rather we don’t know because we are deeply emotionally resistant to what such knowledge tells us about ourselves and our society. Furthermore the powers-that-be do not reward people for such knowledge. Indeed if a person is willing to acknowledge the truth, is in a position to share such knowledge with the public, and wishes to do so, then the organized institutions of our society will turn sharply against such a person.

Phillip Shenon’s book A Cruel and Shocking Act (2013 Macmillan)
Audio version by Robert Petkoff.

Review by Bill Kelly

As a serious and respected journalist Phillip Shenon deserves a listen when he says the whole truth about the assassination of President Kennedy has yet to be told, that much of the evidence and many of the official records have been destroyed, and there are still some unquestioned witnesses who have been ignored or intimidated into silence.

Among the destroyed evidence, some incinerated, some flushed down toilets, others simply gone missing, include original autopsy notes and photos, Oswald’s note to the FBI, backyard pictures, JFK’s brain, Jackie’s pink pill box hat – all gone. And Shenon doesn’t mention the missing Air Force One radio tapes, the Secret Service radio tapes, “Mary’s box” of evidence lost by the Dallas PD, the ONI investigative reports on Oswald, the USMC report that concluded Oswald was not capable of committing the assassination alone, and private interviews with Oswald’s USMC buddies – all gone missing.

in the early 2000’s I met a woman/banker with BNY (now Deutch BNY) who was telling me about her bank’s funding of the digitization of documents at the Kennedy Library. I went digging to find a Sr. board member of the bank who happened to be her boss, and who happened to share a number of corporate and social connections with Richard Egan, cofounder of EMC (mega data storage company in MA); and EMC provided the actual services (that BNY was funding perhaps, perhaps it was their own private donation, I’m not sure) for the digitization. Richard Egan was GWBush Pioneer fund raiser and rewarded with Ambassador to Ireland. He was in Dublin as 9/11 unfolded; Shannon Airport was then used for military transport and rendition flights. Egan resigned his post in 2002 – get in, get out. The point being, I think the library has invited the fox into the hen house. (check out the list of corporate sponsors) And who’s to say that Kennedy documents aren’t being toyed with. That’s why I was curious about the 16k figure on the lead page on Vietnam on their website … the suggestion being that Kennedy was responsible for the build up.

I’m going to write this up and post it when the opportunity presents itself. There’s more context (Bank of New York has a long history with Empire Trust, Jack Crichton and John McCloy’s brother in law as well as the Bronfmans), but this is the synopsis.

“McAdams did indeed make comments that were intended to imply that Gary Aguilar was a drug addict. IMO, they were deliberate, malicious and intended to smear the doctor.”

Robert Harris on John McAdams

Several months ago I received a phone call from a couple of people who lived in the Chicago area. They were associated with a play that was going to be staged at a venue called the Glen Ellyn Village Theater. Glen Ellyn is a suburb of nearly 30,000 people which lies about 25 miles west of the Windy City. The play was called Oswald: The Actual Interrogation.

Dennis Richard is the playwright. And he personally appeared and did a little talk on opening night. This was the Midwest premiere of his play, which had already been produced in Los Angles and New York. The director was William Burghardt, who was one of the men who was in contact with me. Bill was interested in the play since he was interested in the topic. As he told the Glen Ellyn Daily Herald, the subject of Kennedy’s assassination had fascinated him since he was in seventh grade. He therefore read scores of books on the subject. He came to the conclusion that he “thought this couldn’t have happened the way the official inquiry decided.” So Burghardt decided to contact Richard to produce the play for the 50th anniversary of the Village Theater Guild.
[…]
In the summer of 1994, there was a meeting in Washington between CIA officer Ted Shackley, former CIA Director, the late Bill Colby, CIA affiliated journalist Joe Goulden, writer Gus Russo, and Dr. Robert Artwohl. (Probe Vol. 6 No. 2, p. 30) One of the subjects under discussion was the upcoming fall conference in Washington of the newly formed Coalition on Political Assassinations, or COPA. At the time, the Assassination Records Review Board was being formed and some interesting things had already begun flowing out of the National Archives. When word about this meeting got out, Russo tried to pass it off as a research meeting for his book Live By the Sword.This did not remotely explain what Goulden and Artwohl were doing there. When author John Newman called Colby, he said the CIA was worried about what the research community was going to say about David Phillips and Mexico City. Since they thought Phillips had gotten a bum rap from the HSCA. (ibid) It was later revealed that one of the topics of the meeting was if they should use one of their friendly media assets to attack COPA. (ibid)

It looks like they did. But the conduit for the attack was not Gus Russo. Russo was already unwelcome in the critical community because of his work on the wildly skewed 1993 Frontline documentary about Oswald. He had actually been attacked in public at a Dallas Conference the previous year by Cyril Wecht and this author. So what apparently happened is that the strategy was to use someone with a lower public profile. And then to lower that even further by having him attend the conference under a false name. We might have never learned about this operation if the perpetrator had used the name of say ‘Jack Smith’. But he didn’t. He used the name of ‘Paul Nolan’. One day, the real Paul Nolan was surfing the Internet when he found out what had happened. He then posted the following message: “I was just doing some research over the ‘net. I wanted to see if anything came up that had my name in it. Guess what? My REAL name is Paul Nolan! Apparently, some asshole wants to use my name as an alias.”

The “asshole” Nolan was referring to was John McAdams. McAdams attended a COPA Conference in Washington under Nolan’s name. He just happened to meet up with a reporter named Matt Labash. Labash wrote a rather long article for Washington’s City Paper ridiculing the conference. The only attendee given any long quotes in the piece was McAdams, under the name of Nolan.

Was the fact that McAdams managed to get noticed under a phony name and get interviewed by Labash a coincidence? Not likely. When Gary Aguilar called Labash and asked him about the negative spin of the article, the writer replied that he had his marching orders for the piece. Milicent Cranor did some research on Labash and discovered he had an interesting history. At the time, he was employed by Rupert Murdoch’s The Weekly Standard. But he had been formerly employed by the Richard Mellon Scaife funded American Spectator. And one of his previous assignments had been infiltrating the liberal Institute for Policy Studies and doing a lengthy hit piece on them in the Unification Church owned Washington Times. As we will see, the political orbits of the two perpetrators-Labash and McAdams– have much in common. Some would say, too much. Whatever the auspices, the meeting appears to have achieved the objective that Colby and Shackley had in mind. As did the overall counter attack against Stone’s film. The goal was the familiar one of 1.) polarize and 2.) then marginalize.http://www.ctka.net/2013/mcadams.html
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“Francis (Frank) Murdock Pitts is the founding partner and President of architecture+. He has earned a national reputation for his work with psychiatric hospital design and planning as well as design for special populations, long term care, and secure institutions.”

RAILROADED
1. force something through quickly without discussion: to push something through a legislature, committee, or other decision-making body quickly so that there is not enough time for objections to be considered (informal)
2. force somebody to act hastily: to force a person or group to make a decision or take action quickly, without time for consideration or discussion (informal)
3. convict somebody too quickly: to convict somebody on the basis of flimsy or false evidence (informal)
[The implication is of limited thinking.]
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The surveillance industrial complex is just as financially entrenched as the military industrial complex, it is the domestic side of the Permanent Warfare State.~ww
_______________________________________________Willy WhittenYour comment is awaiting moderation.
June 1, 2015 at 8:56 am
It is a “legal thing” J.D.,

Those who are running things behind the scenes need cooperation, simple things like the willingness to sign orders, to sign legislation. Also to give the correct appearances in public, to not give the generals guff in meetings…

A President has what is termed, “the power of the pulpit”; to stand in public and say things that give the impression of the power of his office. The public, and more importantly the apparatus responds to the President’s will if he dares to use it.

The Assassination Tapes by Max Holland
The Atlantic Monthly | June 2004
“One barometer was especially telling in Johnson’s eyes: polls pitting the President against Senator Robert Kennedy, the only person considered a serious obstacle to Johnson’s renomination in 1968. The idea that Johnson might face a challenge from his own party was extraordinarily disheartening. That his putative challenger was Robert Kennedy was infuriating. The most painful presidential transition in American history was bound to have had difficulties. But JFK’s brother had been a unique problem for Johnson since the day of the assassination, when RFK had acted as if Johnson were an undeserving pretender rather than the legitimate successor to the presidency
[…]
Garrison, then forty-five, was considered a responsible, reform-minded prosecutor, albeit one with a decided flair for publicity. Like most district attorneys, he was politically ambitious. There was little on the record to suggest that he was, as it turned out, a cunning demagogue the likes of which had not been seen since the days of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Thus the almost universal response to Garrison’s action was He must have something. By the time the President called Clark, New Orleans was at the center of a media maelstrom.”http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/holland_atlantic.htm
See also: http://jfkfacts.org/assassination/max-holland-reinterprets-the-zapruder-film/
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“Anyway, I’ll try to think of the other names and give ’em to you. He’s the only one I can remember now, and I don’t credit it … I credit it ninety-nine [and] ninety-nine one-hundredths percent untrue. But that’s somethin’ I think we oughta know has been reported, and y’all oughta do what you think oughta be done to protect yourself.”

~LBJ to Acting Attny Gen Ramsey Clark – White House Tape, February 20, 1967 – 9:40 AM
. . . . . . . .
Now, what the hell would Clark have to protect himself from, if these rumors that Johnson was involved in the JFK Assassination that were being spread were true?

Also think about it, this is 1967 and Johnson is pretending just then that he had just heard of the ‘CIA plots to kill Castro’.
These White House tapes are recorded by Johnson on purpose, he could turn them on and off himself – he had control of them, unlike Nixon who was being monitored himself.
These tapes seem to me to be laying out ‘The Script’ as it was to be officially handled. And I think that most parties to these conversations understood that.
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Perhaps the truth of the matter is that the general public is incapable of distinguishing between bullshit and truth. Perhaps it is time to admit that the classification “Homo Sapiens” is the biggest joke of them all.
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How the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations
manipulated evidence to dismiss witness accounts of the assassination.

Over six hundred people witnessed the assassination of President Kennedy. The FBI acting on behalf of the Warren Commission interviewed at least two hundred of them. Regrettably, the Commission seemed unconcerned that the FBI reports on seventy of these interviews did not reveal if the witness had an opinion on the source of the shots. Nor did the Commission conduct an analysis of witness accounts or give any credence to those accounts of witnesses who thought the shots came from the grassy knoll.

Analysis of 178 Witnesses

In 1978 the House Select Committee on Assassinations analyzed the accounts of the witnesses taken by the Warren Commmission and from FBI reports published in the 26 Volumes of Hearings and Exhibits that accompanied the Warren Report. In analyzing witness accounts, a diligent investigator would consider various issues that the House Committee failed to address.
[…]
Jesse Curry, the Dallas chief of police, told reporters on November 23 that although he was driving the lead car of the motorcade, he “could tell from the sound of the three shots that they had come from the book company’s building near downtown Dallas.” (The New York Times, 11/24/63) However, when confronted with the transcript of the police radio transmissions, Curry admitted that just after the shots were fired, he broadcast over his car radio: “Get a man on top of that triple underpass and see what happened up there.” (23H913; 4H161)

Bill Decker, the Dallas Sheriff, was riding with Curry in the lead car, and according to the police transcript, Decker called over Curry’s radio: “Have my office move all available men out of my office into the railroad yard to try to determine what happened in there and hold everything secure until Homicide and other investigators should get there.” (23H913) When Decker testified to the Warren Commission, he did not reveal, nor was he asked, where he thought the shots came from.

House Speaker Tip O’Neill revealed in his autobiography that five years after the assassination:
“I was surprised to hear [Presidential aide Kenneth] O’Donnell say that he was sure he had heard two shots that came from behind the fence.
“That’s not what you told the Warren Commission,” I said.
“You’re right,” he replied. “I told the FBI what I had heard, but they said it couldn’t have happened that way and that I must have been imagining things. So I testified the way they wanted me to. I just didn’t want to stir up any more pain and trouble for the family.”
“Dave Powers [another Kennedy aide] was with us at dinner that night, and his recollection of the shots was the same as O’Donnell’s.” (Man of the House,178)
Read more at:http://www.maryferrell.org/DealeyPlazaWitnessDB.html#page=artScience
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In the summer of 1994 I became curious if a retired employee of the Central Intelligence Agency named Jane Roman was still alive and living in Washington.

I was curious because I had just seen Jane Roman’s name and handwriting on routing slips attached to newly declassified CIA documents about Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy. This is what I found significant: these documents were dated before November 22, 1963. If this Jane Roman person at CIA headquarters had read the documents that she signed for on the routing slips, then she knew something of Oswald’s existence and activities before the itinerant, 24 year-old ex-Marine became world famous for allegedly shooting President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. In other words, Jane Roman was a CIA official in good standing who knew about the alleged assassin in advance of Kennedy’s violent death.

What self-respecting Washington journalist wouldn’t be interested?

Of course, I knew enough about the Kennedy assassination to know that many, many, many people knew something of Lee Oswald before he arrived in Dealey Plaza with a gun—a small family, an assortment of far-flung buddies from the Marines, family and acquaintances in New Orleans and Dallas, some attentive FBI agents, not to mention the occasional anti-Castro Cuban, and even some CIA officials.

But Jane Roman was not just any CIA official. In 1963 she was the senior liaison officer on the Counterintelligence Staff of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia. That set her apart. At the height of the Cold War, the counterintelligence staff was a very select operation within the agency, charged with detecting threats to the integrity of CIA operations and personnel from the Soviet Union and its allies. The CI staff, as it was known in bureaucratic lingo, was headed by James Jesus Angleton, a legendary Yale-educated spy, who was either a patriotic genius or a paranoid drunk or perhaps both. Jane Roman’s responsibilities in the fall of 1963 included handling communications between the CI staff and other federal agencies.

“What is lacking in this article is the fact that on September 20, 1967, the CIA held its first “Garrison Group Meeting” (No 1 – 20 September 1967). This high level, classified meeting was attended by the “Executive Director, General Counsel, Inspector General, Deputy Director for Plans, Mr. Raymond Rocca of CI Staff, Director of Security and Mr. Goodwin.”

“The Minutes of the Meeting read as follows:
[https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=6515#relPageId=2&tab=page]

“1) “Executive Director said that the Director has asked him to convene a group to consider the possible implications for the Agency emanating from New Orleans before, during, and after the trial of Clay Shaw.”

“2) “General Counsel discussed his dealings with Justice and the desire of Shaw’s lawyers to make contact with the Agency.”

“3) “[Raymond] Rocca [who was Jim Angleton’s chief lieutenant] felt that Garrison would indeed obtain a conviction of Shaw for conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy.”

“4) Executive Director said the group should level on two objectives: (a) what kind of action, if any, is available to the Agency, and (b) what actions should be taken inside the Agency to reassure the Director that we have the problem in focus. The possibility of Agency action should be examined from the timing of what can be done before the trial and what might be feasible during and after the trial. It was agreed that OGC and Rocca would make a detailed study of all the facts and consult with Justice as appropriate prior to the next meeting.”

“The meeting was chaired by my father – “F.W.M. Janney”

“So, as early as 1967, we learn here that ‘Rocca felt that Garrison would indeed obtain a conviction of Shaw for conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy.’ If this isn’t prima facie evidence that Clay Shaw was not only an asset of the CIA but was part of the conspiracy “to assassinate President Kennedy,” then I don’t know what else to say . . .

During a recent speech at The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, author Max Holland said that he feared “that someday I’m going to turn into one of those people in Dealey Plaza who has laminated photographs trying to persuade everyone of my view of what happened.”

It would appear that his “nightmare” has come true, albeit minus the laminated photographs.

At the invitation of the museum, Holland presented his belief that Oswald’s first shot struck a traffic light mast pole and was deflected down toward the Triple Overpass where it wounded bystander James Tague – a belief that has no basis in fact as shown again and again on the pages of this blog.

President Kennedy’s speech to the graduating class of American University in Washington DC 51 years ago today represented the high point of his efforts to wind down the Cold War. His vigorous style and clear mind never had a more important goal — or more powerful enemies.

“So often we hear the claim that: “Because he was assassinated, we will never know what JFK’s true opinion about Vietnam was. Therefore, we can’t know what potential actions he would have taken with regards to Vietnam.” Those who make this type of claim have either not studied the official record within the context of the political climate of the day or already have their minds made up. JFK made his position clear from the time he was a member of the House and again as a Senator. Then, as President, he signed the order to withdraw all US personnel by the end of 1965, NSAM 263. The only area of equivocation comes from press interviews. These are “political minefields” and, as such, he could not allow himself to be painted as “soft on communism” just before an election year. However, he was unequivocal as to his intent to withdraw from Vietnam in his official capacity as POTUS.”~Greg Burnhamhttp://assassinationofjfk.net/jfk-opposed-the-vietnam-war/
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“Kennedy encouraged the development of the talks and was seen by those close to him as very enthusiastic about coming to an accommodation with Castro which would have seen an end to the embargo while still in its infancy.
In October 1963 Kennedy met with the editor of the Socialist newsweekly L’Observateur, Jean Daniel, knowing he was visiting Cuba in early November 1963 and was hoping to interview Castro. “I believe there is no country in the world, including all the African regions, including any and all the countries under colonial domination, where economic colonization, humiliation and exploitation are worse than in Cuba, in part owing to my own country’s policies during the Batista regime,” Kennedy told an amazed Daniel.
“I believe that we created, built and manufactured the Castro movement out of whole cloth and without realizing it I believe that the accumulation of these mistakes has jeopardized all of Latin America.”
“I can assure you that I have understood the Cubans. I approved the proclamation which Fidel Castro made in the Sierra Maestra when he justifiably called for justice and specially yearned to rid Cuba of corruption,” Kennedy said. “I will go even further to some extent it is as though Batista was the incarnation of a number of sins on the part of the United States. Now we shall have to pay for those sins. In the matter of the Batista regime, I am in agreement with the first Cuban revolutionaries. That is perfectly clear,” Kennedy told the reporter.
The president outlined the role of Castro in promoting communism to other Latin American countries and laid the blame on him for the Cuban missile crisis which had brought the world to the brink of nuclear war just a year earlier. However he dangled a carrot, knowing Daniel would repeat his comments to Castro. “The United States now has the possibility of doing as much good in Latin America as it has done in the past. I would even say that we alone (not the Soviets) have this power, on the essential condition that communism does not take over there,” Kennedy said.”http://www.sierraleonetimes.com/index.php/sid/232820795
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Dallas Through the Looking Glass
The plot to link JFK’s death and Watergate.
SLATE Magazine
“In late 1973 theories like Scott’s were proliferating. From that historical vantage point, the twin traumas of Dallas and Watergate seemed to bracket a decade of disorientation and dashed promise. Many Americans, wondering how an era ripe with hope could devolve so fast into turmoil and crisis, began to reach for conspiracy theories to explain where “the ’60s” had gone awry. This was the moment, with dreams of revolution (or merely reform) now dead, when outlandish notions about Kennedy’s death—and, more important, a cynicism about the workings of American democracy—took root.”~David Greenberghttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history_lesson/2003/11/dallas_through_the_looking_glass.html

This article by Greenberg is transparently cheesy spin for those who know the real facts of modern political power.
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“This finding is worth repeating on the 48th anniversary of JFK’s death: Jackie and Bobby Kennedy “believed that the president was felled by domestic opponents.”

No doubt inadvertently, the National Geographic JFK special fostered a reassuring yet false view of American history: that there is little reason to doubt the official story blaming a “lone nut.” In fact, Bobby and Jackie were not alone in suspecting conspiracy in Dallas. At the time, 60 percent of Dallas residents suspected a plot. JFK’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, privately suspected a plot emanating from JFK enemies in Cuba or Vietnam. In Havana, Fidel Castro, a man whose peaceful dotage is proof positive he knows something about detecting CIA conspiracies, concluded JFK had been killed by a right-wing faction within his own government. More recently, University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato, a mainstream political pundit and author of a forthcoming book on the legacy of Kennedy’s assassination, has joined critics of the official JFK story.

“Critical documents that could explain more about what happened are being hidden, and aggressively so,” Sabato told me in an email. “It’s no wonder a large majority of Americans believe in various conspiracy theories. There’s plenty to be suspicious about.

The newly declassified CIA’s records show that Angleton’s CI staff kept track of Oswald constantly from October 1959 to November 1963. At Angleton’s direction, more than 40 reports about Oswald’s travels in the communist world, his family life and his political views were funneled to a secretive office in the Counterintelligence Staff known as the Special Investigations Group. The SIG was headed by Birch O’Neal, a loyal aide who had served as CIA station chief in Guatemala during the CIA-sponsored coup d’etat in 1954.

The CIA files show that the pace of intelligence gathering around Oswald quickened in mid-1963. In August 1963, Joannides’ assets started reporting on Oswald’s antics in New Orleans. When Oswald visited the Cuban consulate in Mexico City a few weeks later, he was surveilled by Phillips. When CIA and FBI reports on Oswald were sent to the SIG, they were signed for, and read by Angleton’s staff. No, this isn’t Internet fable: The routing sheets with their signatures can be found in the National Archives, and Roman and Hood confirmed their authenticity in separate interviews.

Six weeks after Angleton’s aides reviewed the Oswald file, JFK was shot dead and Oswald was arrested for the crime. These CIA officers did not investigate and conclude that Oswald had acted alone. Some, including Phillips and Joannides, took actions to insure that blame for the crime of Dallas would fall on Cuba. Others, like Scott, scrambled to learn more about Oswald. Angleton blandly disavowed his long-standing interest in Kennedy’s accused killer and concealed the paper trail that proved it.

In the upper echelons of the CIA, Lee Harvey Oswald was not regarded as a “lone nut.” At the level of Jim Angleton, Win Scott and David Phillips, Oswald was regarded as an extremely sensitive operational matter. It is inevitable that historians will view him the same way.”~Jefferson Morley (NOV 22, 2011)http://www.salon.com/2011/11/22/the_holy_grail_of_the_jfk_story/
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Miles Copeland – CIA
Copeland joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947 and for the next three years was a political attaché at the United States Embassy in Damascus. Copeland was one of only 200 agents at the time and “likened his comrades-in-stealth to innocent kids given a new toy and a license to steal.”http://spartacus-educational.com/Miles_Copeland.htm

“We don’t know what happened, but we do know Oswald had intelligence connections.
Everywhere you look with him, there are the fingerprints of intelligence.”~Sen. Richard S. Schweiker (R-PA)
. . .
Senator Richard Schweiker, who in the mid-1970s chaired a Senate subcommittee charged with investigating the role of U.S. Intelligence (specifically the CIA) at the time of the Kennedy assassination. Schweiker came to thoroughly distrust the conclusions of the Warren Commission, the Presidential panel chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren and tasked by newly sworn in President Lyndon Johnson with reporting the truth to the American people about who killed JFK. Said Schweiker, “I think the Warren Commission is like a house of cards. It’s going to collapse.” After months of intensive study and research, Schweiker without hesitation asserted on the CBS News program Face the Nation in 1976: “We don’t know what happened, but we do know Oswald had intelligence connections. Everywhere you look with him, there are the fingerprints of intelligence.”
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INSTITUTE FOR HISTORICAL REVIEWPropaganda and Disinformation: How the CIA Manufactures History
By Victor Marchetti

“In the eyes of posterity it will inevitably seem that, in safeguarding our freedom, we destroyed it. The vast clandestine apparatus we built up to prove our enemies’ resources and intentions only served in the end to confuse our own purposes; that practice of deceiving others for the good of the state led infallibly to our deceiving ourselves; and that vast army of clandestine personnel built up to execute these purposes were soon caught up in the web of their own sick fantasies, with disastrous consequences for them and us.”
~Malcom Muggeridge, May 1966

“That, in a nutshell, sums up what the CIA has accomplished over the years through its various clandestine propaganda and disinformation programs. It has unwittingly and, often, deliberately decieved itself — and the American taxpayer. The CIA is a master at distorting history — even creating its own version of history to suit its institutional and operational purposes. It can do this largely because of two great advantages it possesses. One is the excessively secret environment in which it operates, and the other is that it is essentially a private instrument of the presidency.

The real reason for the official secrecy, in most instances, is not to keep the opposition (the CIA’s euphemistic term for the enemy) from knowing what is going on; the enemy usually does know. The basic reason for governmental secrecy is to keep you, the American public, from knowing — for you, too, are considered the opposition, or enemy — so that you cannot interfere. When the public does not know what the government or the CIA is doing, it cannot voice its approval or disapproval of their actions. In fact, they can even lie to your about what they are doing or have done, and you will not know it.”~Marchetti

“As for the second advantage, despite frequent suggestion that the CIA is a rogue elephant, the truth is that the agency functions at the direction of and in response to the office of the president. All of its major clandestine operations are carried out with the direct approval of or on direct orders from the White House. The CIA is a secret tool of the president — every president. And every president since Truman has lied to the American people in order to protect the agency. When lies have failed, it has been the duty of the CIA to take the blame for the president, thus protecting him. This is known in the business as “plausible denial.” ~Victor Marchetti

As much as I respect Mr Marchetti for his inside knowledge and revelations about the CIA, I strongly disagree with the quote by him above. It is my view that the President and the CIA all work for the same Criminal Syndicate, and that the activities of the Executive and the Intelligence Services are coordinated at a higher level that the “national government”.

Marchetti is in fact presenting a ‘Revetment” , a ‘modified limited hangout’. Whether he is doing so willfully, or is simply ignorant of the larger aspects of the architecture of political power is not certain.

“All these techniques have one thing in common, and depend on one thing: secrecy. Secrecy is maintained not to keep the opposition – the CIA’s euphemistic term for the enemy — from knowing what’s going on, because the enemy usually does know. Secrecy exists to keep you, the American public, from knowing what is going on, because in many ways you are the real enemy.”~Ibid

The above is true enough, but the following indicates to me, the main reason Marchetti’s work was published after some burlesque to make it appear he was going against the grain. Marchetti reveals his prime agenda with the following; meant to take the “motive” for the coup against Kennedy out of the picture:

“There was a fairly widespread belief that one reason Kennedy was assassinated was because he was going to get us out of Vietnam. Don’t you believe it He was the CIA’s kind of president, rough, tough, and gung-ho. Under Kennedy we became involved in Vietnam in a serious way, not so much militarily as through covert action. It is a fact that the United States engineered the overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem, South Vietnam’s premier, and Ngo Dinh Nhu, his powerful brother. A cable was sent out to the ambassador which said, “If Lou Conein goofs up [Lucien Conein was a key CIA operative in Saigon], it’s his responsibility.” So when E. Howard Hunt faked these memos and cables when he was working for the “plumbers” on behalf of President Nixon (and against the Democrats), he knew what he was doing. That was his defense, that he wasn’t really forging or inventing anything. “Stuff like that really existed, but I couldn’t find it,” he said. Of course Hunt couldn’t find it by that time the original documents were gone. But Hunt knew what he was doing.”~Marchetti
. . . .Yea, Hunt knew what he was doing, but the story about Kennedy being behind the assassination of Diem is disinformation. Hunt was actually involved in the assassination of Kennedy, and soiling Kennedy’s reputation puts that in a more positive light.

“Should have phoney 201 in RI [Records Integration] to backstop this, all documents therein forged & backdated. Should look like a CE file …. Cover: planning should include provision for blaming Sovs or Czechs in case of blow.”
— Excerpt from “Project ZRRIFLE” notes, created in December 1960, by Bill Harvey, the CIA officer in charge of this assassinations project.

A 201 file, also known as a “personality” file, is a standard CIA record. So Harvey is proposing that the agency’s own internal records be doctored.

Harvey’s comment also shows that falsely implicating communists in assassinations perpetrated by the CIA was not a conspiracy theorist’s delusion. It was a tactic recommended by one of the CIA’s most formidable operators.

COVERS & LEGENDS
A spy must live a life of lies.
Adopt a cover identity and learn why an agent needs one.
Proceed directly to the Briefing Film where you’ll come face to face with the real world of spying.

“BC. I don’t have the omniscience of a god but I do understand the security classification used by DOD better than you it appears. But I now see why you take Prouty to your breast so strongly. You both are very big on imagination. Imagination is what has caused much of this mess, Willy.”~Bill Clarke
. . . . .

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”~Albert Einstein

I know why you are jealous of Fletcher Prouty, it is because his experience and knowledge of the DOD is far superior of yours, plus he grasps the importance of imagination, and that the trite interpretation of the term as “just making stuff up” or “being juvenile” is not at the core of it. All discovery and invention is dependent on human imagination. There would be no civilization, no science, no technology; no empathy for one another without the imagination to identify with the pain of others.

Your list of three major categories of security clearances may be correct as far as it goes, but it is silly and ridiculous to conclude that there are no subheadings for specialty clearances.

That while in the United States Marine Corps I served for approximately
three or four months with Lee Harvey Oswald in MACS-9 in Santa Ana,
California. On one occasion I arranged a date for Oswald with my aunt,
Rosaleen Quinn, an airline stewardess who, because she was interested in
working for the American Embassy in Russia, had taken a leave from her job
in order to study Russian. I arranged the date because I knew of Oswald’s
study of the Russian language. I also arranged a date for my aunt with
Lieutenant John E. Donovan. I am under the impression that prior to
studying Russian, Oswald had studied German.

I recall no serious political remarks on the part of Oswald. On occasion,
however, Oswald, when addressing other Marines, would refer to them as
“Comrade.” It seemed to me and, as far as I know, to my fellow
Marines–that Oswald used this term in fun. At times some of us responded
by calling him “Comrade.” Oswald also enjoyed listening to recordings of
Russian songs.

My recollection of Oswald is to the effect that he was personally quite
neat, and that he stayed to himself. Oswald complained about orders that
he was given, but no more than did the average Marine. I regarded Oswald
as quite intelligent, in view of the fact that he had taught himself two
foreign languages. I do not recall Oswald’s having any dates other than
the one which I arranged for him with my aunt.

I do not remember Oswald’s getting into any fights. I have no recollection
concerning Oswald’s reading habits, religious beliefs, or trips off the
post. I do not remember his reading a Russian newspaper, and do not recall
his having any nicknames. (I was nicknamed “Beezer.”) I do not remember
Oswalds having his name written in Russian on his jacket, and have no
recollection of any visitors received by Oswald.

“..one thing that a radar operator might have access to which could affect
National Defense would be the codes which allow airplanes to enter US
airspace and land at military bases here and overseas. If the Russians had
that, they could launch a surprise attack by using US planes and knowing
the right codes to get into US airspace unchallenged.

According to the testimony of his Marine crew commander at El Toro, Lt. John Donovan, WC testimony:

“Oswald had access to the location of all bases in the west coast
areas, all radio frequencies for all squadrons, all tactical call signs,
and the relative strength of all squadrons, number and type of aircraft in
a squadron, who was the commanding officer, the authentication code of
entering and exiting the ADIZ, which stand for Air Defense Identification
Zone. He knew the range of our radar. He knew the range of our radio. And
he knew the range of surrounding units’ radio and radar… There are some
things which he knew on which he received instructions that there is no
way of changing, such as the MPS 16 height-finder radar gear… He had
also been schooled on a piece of machinery call a TPX-1, which is used to
transfer radio–radar and radio signals over a great distance. Radar is
very susceptible to homing missiles, and this piece of equipment is used
to put your radar antenna several miles away, and relay the information
back to your site which you hope is relatively safe. He had been schooled
on this.”
[WC Vol. 8 p.298]
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Security clearances can be issued by many United States of America government agencies, including the Department of Defense (DoD), the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Energy (DoE), the Department of Justice (DoJ), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The USA’s DoE clearances include the “L” and “Q” levels. DoD issues more than 80% of all clearances. There are three levels of DoD security clearances:[1]

> Confidential
> Secret
> Top Secret
. . . .
Note these are “levels”, not necessarily the job designated clearance, which would be a sub-category, and more specific. Anthony Marsh claims his father, at NSA had a “Crypto” top secret clearance having to do with Cryptology.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._security_clearance_terms

Harold Weisberg served as an Office of Strategic Services officer during World War II, a U.S. Senate staff member and investigative reporter, an investigator for the Senate Committee on Civil Liberties.

Jean Davison claims; “The “crypto” claim comes from a 1966 radio talk show featuring Harold Weisberg. An unidentified person who called in claimed he’d served with Oswald and that Oswald had both “crypto” and “top secret” clearances.”
But Jean gives no source to check up on whether this assertion she just made is valid.
She goes on to say that she thinks, “..this was first mentioned in Weisberg’s “Oswald in New Orleans.”

A security clearance is a determination by the United States Government that a person or company is eligible for access to classified information. The term “eligibility for access” means the same thing as security clearance and appears in some Government record systems. There are two types of clearances: Personnel Security Clearances (PCLs) and Facility Security Clearances (FCLs).
What are the security clearance levels?
Security clearances can be issued by many United States Government agencies, including the Department of Defense (DoD), the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Energy (DoE), the Department of Justice, and the Central Intelligence Agency. DoD, which issues more than 80% of all clearances, and most other agencies have three levels of security clearances:
• Confidential
• Secret
• Top Secret

What is a “special access authorization?”
Access to classified defense information is based on an appropriate level of security clearance (Confidential, Secret or Top Secret) and a “need-to-know.” Need-to-know can be either a formal or an informal determination. All classified defense information exists within one of these two “need-to-know” domains—formal or informal. Information that exists within the domain of informal
need-to-know determinations is referred to as “collateral classified” information. Information that requires a formal need-to-know determination (also known as a special access authorization) exists within Special Access Programs (SAP), including Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) and Restricted Data (RD).

Acronyms such as ATOMAL, CNWDI, COMSEC, COSMIC, CRYPTO, NOFORN, ORCON, SAP, SCI, RD, SIOP-ESI, SPECAT, SIOP-ESI, etc., are not clearances. They are categories of classified information, some of which have extra need-to-know restrictions or require special access authorizations. For example, COSMIC stands for “Control of Secret Material in an International Command.” COSMIC Top Secret is the term used for NATO Top Secret Information. There are many such markings (caveats) stamped or printed on classified material, but
most are only acronyms denoting special administrative handling procedures

Warren Commission counsel David Belin wrote: “The Rosetta Stone [the key to Egyptian hieroglyphics] to the solution of President Kennedy’s murder is the murder of Officer J. D. Tippit.”[391] From the Warren Commission’s standpoint, the killing of Tippit, who presumably challenged the assassin’s flight after he killed Kennedy, was said to prove “that Oswald had the capacity to kill.”[392]

Warren Commission critic Harold Weisberg saw Tippit’s murder instead as the government’s way of poisoning the public mind against Lee Harvey Oswald: “Immediately the [flimsy] police case [against Oswald] required a willingness to believe. This was provided by affixing to Oswald the opprobrious epithet of ‘cop-killer.’”[393]

It seems curious to me that the opposition is attempting to prove a negative; that there is no such thing as a “Crypto” security clearance. For myself I find it a non-issue. It is just a name in a system of ever changing twisting covert nomenclature. Remember what Dulles said in that “off the record” discussion of the WC January 22,1964. To paraphrase, it was something about the fact that some agents are only known by their direct handler, and note of it is in a code that that handler is sole person to know.

Some people do not have the imagination to grasp how secret covert operations are. Spies attempt to avoid all oversight, they don’t even want their superiors to know what they are up to! It comes down to Spy v Spy – almost as absurd as the stuff in the old Mad Magazine series.

The Mysterious Deletions of the Warren Commission’s “TOP SECRET” Transcript of January 22, 1964
by Hal Verb

“I think this record should be destroyed.”~Warren Commission member & former head of the CIA, Allen Dulles

For over thirty years a transcript of one of those “top secret” executive session meetings (January 22, 1964) has been in existence. This particular transcript dealt principally with an alleged “dirty rumor” that Oswald had been an agent of some federal agency, notably the FBI. It was at the January 22nd executive meeting that Allen Dulles opined: “I think this record ought to be destroyed.” Another Commission member, Hale Boggs, nervously restated the case when he said plaintively, “I don’t even like to see this taken down.”

JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters
By Prof. Edward Curtin – Global Research, November 16, 2013

“If Lee Harvey Oswald was connected to the intelligence community, the FBI and the CIA, then we can logically conclude that he was not “a lone-nut” assassin. Douglass marshals a wealth of evidence to show how from the very start Oswald was moved around the globe like a pawn in a game, and when the game was done, the pawn was eliminated in the Dallas police headquarters. As he begins to trace Oswald’s path, Douglass asks this question: “Why was Lee Harvey Oswald so tolerated and supported by the government he betrayed?” After serving as a U.S. Marine at the CIA’s U-2 spy plane operating base in Japan with a Crypto clearance (higher than top secret but a fact suppressed by the Warren Commission), Oswald left the Marines and defected to the Soviet Union. After denouncing the U.S., working at a Soviet factory in Minsk , and taking a Russian wife – during which time Gary Powers’ U-2 spy plane is shot down over the Soviet Union – he returned to the U.S. with a loan from the American Embassy in Moscow, only to be met at the dock in Hoboken, New Jersey by a man, Spas T. Raikin, a prominent anti-communist with extensive intelligence connections, recommended by the State Department. He passed through immigration with no trouble, was not prosecuted, moved to Fort Worth, Texas where , at the suggestion of the Dallas CIA Domestic Contacts Service chief, he was met and befriended by George de Mohrenschildt, an anti-communist Russian, who was a CIA asset. De Mohrenschildt got him a job four days later at a graphic arts company that worked on maps for the U.S. Army Map Service related to U-2 spy missions over Cuba. Oswald was then shepherded around the Dallas area by de Mohrenschildt who, in 1977, on the day he revealed he had contacted Oswald for the CIA and was to meet with the House Select Committee on Assasinations’ Gaeton Fonzi, allegedly committed suicide. Oswald then moved to New Orleans in April 1963 where got a job at the Reilly Coffee Company owned by CIA-affiliated William Reilly. The Reilly Coffee Company was located in close vicinity to the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and Office of Naval Intelligence offices and a stone’s throw from the office of Guy Bannister, a former Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Chicago Bureau, who worked as a covert action coordinator for the intelligence services, supplying and training anti-Castro paramilitaries meant to ensnare Kennedy. Oswald then went to work with Bannister and the CIA paramilitaries.

During this time up until the assassination Oswald engaged in all sorts of contradictory activities, one day portraying himself as pro-Castro, the next day as anti-Castro, many of these theatrical performances being directed from Bannister’s office. It was as though Oswald, on the orders of his puppet masters, was enacting multiple and antithetical roles in order to confound anyone intent on deciphering the purposes behind his actions and to set him up as a future “assassin.” Douglass persuasively argues that Oswald “seems to have been working with both the CIA and FBI,” as a provocateur for the former and an informant for the latter. Jim and Elsie Wilcott, who worked at the CIA Tokyo Station from 1960-64, in a 1978 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, said, “It was common knowledge in the Tokyo CIA station that Oswald worked for the agency.”http://www.globalresearch.ca/jfk-and-the-unspeakable-why-he-died-and-why-it-matters/16273?print=1
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Chapter 3
A Totally Irrational Book … Not A Thing With Any Source In it.

Twelve years after Inquest appeared, there came Epstein’s sixth book. When it appeared it was titled Legend: The Secret World of lee Harvey Oswald. Supposedly this was Epstein’s third book on the JFK assassination but it was not that at all.
His second book was titled Counterplot: The Garrison Case. It was competent criticism of the case New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison had brought against Clay Shaw in 1969, in which the jury found Shaw not guilty in less than an hour. It served a major propaganda purpose of opposing Garrison who, in charging Shaw with the assassination, was also charging the government by alleging Shaw was a government agent. It also served a major government propaganda interest in refuting Garrison’s allegations that the Warren Report did not do the job expected of it. Counterplot, as a book, was an expanded version of the long article Epstein wrote for The New Yorker magazine. It appeared the summer before the book was published. In effect it was a condensation of the book. It received the major media attention that, just about all the media, had supported the Warren Report. It got attention that was even more supportive because just about all criticism of the Warren Report went unpublished and when, rarely, it was published, it was ignored by the major media. The prepublication publicity for Legend was also extensive because The New Yorker article was written about by many if not most of the reporters who were in New Orleans to cover the Garrison case. Garrison had begun with major attention and continued with major criticisms of him and of his alleged case.
Epstein has what is not usual in book, an extra page where the dedication usually appears. It is followed by the dedication page with dedication to his parents. Epstein’s inability to be seriously critical of the official account of the assassination is reflected by the lack of an obvious criticism of what he has on that extra page, which has no heading..”
jfk.hood.edu/Collection/…/HW%20Manuscripts/…/Epstein%2003.doc

PRISCILLA JOHNSON: Witness for the Prosecution
by Hal Verb
Article originally appeared in The Third Decade, Volume 8, No. 2-3 (January-March, 1992). Reprinted here with permission of the author.http://www.jfk-info.com/verb-4.htm
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“Acronyms such as ATOMAL, CNWDI, COMSEC, COSMIC, CRYPTO, NOFORN, ORCON, SAP, SCI, RD, SIOP-ESI, SPECAT, SIOP-ESI, etc., are not clearances. They are categories of classified information, some of which have extra need-to-know restrictions.”~Bill Clarke

You are playing with words Bill, making a spurious rhetorical argument now after you yourself prove right there that, “CRYPTO” is a category of classified information, which has extra need-to-know restrictions.”

So again, you are wrong, but claim you were right. And you call Prouty a liar! You have called a lot of people liars Bill. I think that is very hypocritical under the obvious circumstances.
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In his usual disingenuous manner Bill Clarke prevaricates, minces words, and plays rhetorical games on JFKfacts. Clarke’s distinction between “Classification” and “Clearance” is not only meaningless, but irrational. He slurs Fletcher Prouty, making claims that he can only backup with bullshit accusations. Bill is the one who is a liar and arrogant know-nothing when it comes to deep knowledge of covert affairs. He reminds me of Maxitwat from T&S in many ways.
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Willy WhittenYour comment is awaiting moderation.
July 28, 2015 at 11:49 am
“Galbraith and the video carry on the lie about NSAM 263 and I honestly don’t know how they do that with a straight face.”~Bill Clarke

Mr Clarke has made it a habit to frame those he disagrees with as liars on this blog. Mr Clarke relies on spurious rhetorical semantics to frame his own interpretations as “factual” while accusing the larger more encompassing framing of all of the data by others as “fictional”.

He relies on his own quaint anecdotes from his limited perspective to insinuate they have a more universal relevance – more weight than they actually have. His arrogance argues with those with much more inside experience and expertise than his own.

I propose that Mr Clarke pretends to a greater perspective than his experience would actually provide. And I honestly do not see how he can do this with a straight face.
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CIA documents show US never believed Gary Powers was shot down
~Giles Whittell, Washington Correspondent

U-2 pilot Gary Powers, a few weeks before his suspicious death in a helicopter crash in LA, revealed that he did not believe his plane was shot down by the Soviets and indicated sabotage on the part of the CIA instead, in order to undermine the possibility of detente between Eisenhower and Kruschev. It is not a “conspiracy theory” that Lee Harvey Oswald, one of nine Office of Naval Intelligence fake defectors who went to the USSR in the same month, told ONI’s Richard Snyder at the American Embassy in Moscow that he was going to reveal the U-2 secrets to the Soviets. Oswald had been stationed, as a Marine, at every base the U-2 operated from, including Atsugi, Japan and tracked it by radar. He had a Crypto clearance. Those things are in the historical record. It is not likely that he gave up any such information or would have been allowed to. Snyder kept Oswald’s proffered passport and did not act on his renunciation of US citizenship. Snyder returned the passport to Oswald on his way out of Russia with his new bride Marina, transportation paid by the State Department. Nice treatment for a defector who gave secrets to the Soviets. Marina even got Oswald’s story confused with another ONI defector, Robert Webster, when she testified to the Warren Commission about how her husband got to the Soviet Union and where he lived in Moscow. However if sabotage of the detente was in the planning, it would have been useful to use the Oswald deception to explain how the Soviets could track and shoot down the U-2. This article suggests that Powers himself might have been a false defector as well. What is clear is that Powers did not buy the official story. ~John Judge
The London Times – May 1, 2010http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article711351
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The Parkland bullet was not CE399. It matters not where this pointed tipped hunting bullet came from. What matters is that it is not the bullet on exhibit as #399. The chain of custody is broken and nonexistent, the whole thing was a farce. CE399 was never fired in Dealey Plaza.

The Magic Bullet: Even More Magical Than We Knew?
Gary Aguilar and Josiah Thompson

Introduction

Among the myriad JFK assassination controversies, none more cleanly divides Warren Commission supporter from skeptic than the “Single Bullet Theory.” The brainchild of a former Warren Commission lawyer, Mr. Arlen Specter, now the senior Senator from Pennsylvania, the theory is the sine qua non of the Warren Commission’s case that with but three shots, including one that missed, Lee Harvey Oswald had single handedly altered the course of history. [Fig. 1]

Mr. Specter’s hypothesis was not one that immediately leapt to mind from the original evidence and the circumstances of the shooting. It was, rather, born of necessity, if one sees as a necessity the keeping of Oswald standing alone in the dock. The theory had to contend with the considerable evidence there was suggesting that more than one shooter was involved.

For example, because the two victims in Dealey Plaza, President Kennedy and Governor John Connally, had suffered so many wounds – eight in all, it had originally seemed as if more than two slugs from the supposed “sniper’s nest” would have been necessary to explain all the damage. In addition, a home movie taken by a bystander, Abraham Zapruder, showed that too little time had elapsed between the apparent shots that hit both men in the back for Oswald to have fired, reacquired his target, and fired again. The Single Bullet Theory neatly solved both problems. It posited that a single, nearly whole bullet that was later recovered had caused all seven of the non-fatal wounds sustained by both men.[1]

Figure 1. CE #399. Warren Commission Exhibit #399, said to have caused both of JFK’s non-fatal wounds and all five of the Governor Connally’s wounds, is shown in two views, above left. Arlen Specter theorized the bullet had followed a path much like the one shown at right. (National Archives photo)

But the bullet that was recovered had one strikingly peculiar feature: it had survived all the damage it had apparently caused virtually unscathed itself. The shell’s near-pristine appearance, which prompted some to call it the “magic bullet,” left many skeptics wondering whether the bullet in evidence had really done what the Commission had said it had done. Additional skepticism was generated by the fact the bullet was not found in or around either victim. It was found instead on a stretcher at the hospital where the victims were treated.

Mr. Specter’s idea was that, after passing completely through JFK and Governor Connally, the bullet had fallen out of the Governor’s clothes and onto a stretcher at Parkland Hospital. But it was never unequivocally established that either victim had ever lain on the stretcher where the bullet was discovered.[2] Nevertheless, studies done at the FBI Laboratory seemed to unquestionably link the missile to Oswald’s rifle, and the FBI sent the Warren Commission a memo on July 7, 1964 detailing how it had run down the bullet’s chain of possession, which looked pretty solid. According to the FBI, the two hospital employees who discovered the bullet originally identified it as the same bullet six months later in an FBI interview

That a bullet, fired from Oswald’s weapon and later identified by hospital witnesses, had immediately turned up on a stretcher in the hospital where the victims were treated struck some as perhaps a little too convenient. Suspicions it had been planted ensued. But apart from its peculiar provenance, there was little reason in 1964 to doubt the bullet’s bona fides. But then in 1967, one of the authors reported that one of the two hospital employees who had found the bullet, Parkland personnel director O.P. Wright, had told him that the bullet he saw and held on the day of the assassination did not look like the bullet that later turned up in FBI evidence. That claim was in direct conflict with an FBI memo of July 7, 1964, which said that Wright had told an FBI agent that the bullet did look like the shell he’d held on the day of the murder.

For thirty years, the conflict lay undisturbed and unresolved. Finally, in the mid 1990s, the authors brought this conflict to the attention of the Assassinations Records Review Board, a federal body charged with opening the abundant, still-secret files concerning the Kennedy assassination. A search through newly declassified files led to the discovery of new information on this question. It turns out that the FBI’s own, once-secret files tend to undermine the position the FBI took publicly in its July, 1964 memo to the Warren Commission, and they tend to support co-author Josiah Thompson. Thompson got a further boost when a retired FBI agent, in a recorded telephone interview and in a face-to-face meeting, flatly denied what the FBI had written about him to the Warren Commission in 1964.

A Bullet is Found at Parkland Hospital

The story begins in a ground floor elevator lobby at the Dallas hospital where JFK and John Connelly were taken immediately after being shot. According to the Warren Commission, Parkland Hospital senior engineer, Mr. Darrell C. Tomlinson, was moving some wheeled stretchers when he bumped a stretcher “against the wall and a bullet rolled out.”[3] He called for help and was joined by Mr. O.P. Wright, Parkland’s personnel director. After examining the bullet together, Mr. Wright passed it along to one of the U.S. Secret Service agents who were prowling the hospital, Special Agent Richard Johnsen.[4]

Johnsen then carried the bullet back to Washington, D. C. and handed it to James Rowley, the chief of the Secret Service. Rowley, in turn, gave the bullet to FBI agent Elmer Lee Todd,[5] who carried it to agent Robert Frazier in the FBI’s Crime Lab.[6] Without exploring the fact that the HSCA discovered that there may have been another witness who was apparently with Tomlinson when the bullet was found, what concerns us here is whether the bullet currently in evidence, Commission Exhibit #399, is the same bullet Tomlinson found originally.

The early history of the bullet, Commission Exhibit #399, is laid out in Warren Commission Exhibit #2011. This exhibit consists of a 3-page, July 7, 1964 FBI letterhead memorandum that was written to the Warren Commission in response to a Commission request that the Bureau trace “various items of physical evidence,” among them #399 [Fig. 2]. #2011 relates that, in chasing down the bullet’s chain of possession, FBI agent Bardwell Odum took #399 to Darrell Tomlinson and O.P. Wright on June 12, 1964. The memo asserts that both men told Agent Odum that the bullet “appears to be the same one” they found on the day of the assassination, but that neither could “positively identify” it. [Figs. 2, 3]

Positive identification” of a piece of evidence by a witness means that the witness is certain that an object later presented in evidence is the same one that was originally found. The most common way to establish positive identification is for a witness to place his initials on a piece of evidence upon first finding it. The presence of such initials is of great help later when investigators try to prove a link through an unbroken chain of possession between the object in evidence and a crime.

Understandably, neither Tomlinson nor Wright inscribed his initials on the stretcher bullet. But that both witnesses told FBI Agent Odum, so soon after the murder, that CE 399 looked like the bullet they had found on a stretcher was compelling reason to suppose that it was indeed the same one.

However, CE #2011 included other information that raised questions about the bullet. As first noted by author Ray Marcus,[7] it also states that on June 24, 1964, FBI agent Todd, who received the bullet from Rowley, the head of the Secret Service, returned with presumably the same bullet to get Secret Service agents Johnsen and Rowley to identify it. #2011 reports that both Johnsen and Rowley advised Todd that they “could not identify this bullet as the one” they saw on the day of the assassination. # 2011 contains no comment about the failure being merely one of not “positively identifying” the shell that, otherwise, “appeared to be the same” bullet they had originally handled. [Figs. 2, 3]

Thus, in #2011 the FBI reported that both Tomlinson and Wright said #399 resembled the Parkland bullet, but that neither of the Secret Service Agents could identify it. FBI Agent Todd originally received the bullet from Rowley on 11/22/63 and it was he who then returned on 6/24/64 with supposedly the same bullet for Rowley and Johnsen to identify. Given the importance of this case, one imagines that by the time Todd returned, they would have had at least a passing acquaintance. Had it truly been the same bullet, one might have expected one or both agents to tell Todd it looked like the same bullet, even if neither could “positively identify” it by an inscribed initial. After all, neither Tomlinson nor Wright had inscribed their initials on the bullet, and yet #2011 says that they said they saw a resemblance.

Figure 3. Last two pages of 7/7/64 FBI memo to Warren Commission, as published in C.E. #2011. Note that FBI states that both Dallas witnesses said #399 looked like the bullet they found on 11/22/63.

And there the conflicted story sat, until one of the current authors published a book in 1967.

Two Different Accounts from One Witness

Six Seconds in Dallas reported on an interview with O.P. Wright in November 1966. Before any photos were shown or he was asked for any description of #399, Wright said: “That bullet had a pointed tip.”

“Pointed tip?” Thompson asked.

“Yeah, I’ll show you. It was like this one here,” he said, reaching into his desk and pulling out the .30 caliber bullet pictured in Six Seconds.”[8]

As Thompson described it in 1967, “I then showed him photographs of CE’s 399, 572 (the two ballistics comparison rounds from Oswald’s rifle) (sic), and 606 (revolver bullets) (sic), and he rejected all of these as resembling the bullet Tomlinson found on the stretcher. Half an hour later in the presence of two witnesses, he once again rejected the picture of 399 as resembling the bullet found on the stretcher.”[9]
[Fig. 4]

Figure 4. In an interview in 1966, Parkland Hospital witness O.P. Wright told author Thompson that the bullet he handled on 11/22/63 did not look like C.E. # 399.

Thus in 1964 the Warren Commission, or rather the FBI, claimed that Wright believed the original bullet resembled #399. In 1967, Wright denied there was a resemblance. Recent FBI releases prompted by the JFK Review Board support author Thompson’s 1967 report.

Whereas the FBI had claimed in CE #2011 that Tomlinson and Wright had told Agent Odum on June 12, 1964 that CE #399 “appears to be the same” bullet they found on the day of the assassination, nowhere in this previously classified memo, which was written before CE #2011, is there any corroboration that either of the Parkland employees saw a resemblance. Nor is FBI agent Odum’s name mentioned anywhere in the once-secret file, whether in connection with #399, or with Tomlinson or with Wright.

A declassified record, however, offers some corroboration for what CE 2011 reported about Secret Service Agents Johnsen and Rowley. A memo from the FBI’s Dallas field office dated 6/24/64 reported that, “ON JUNE TWENTYFOUR INSTANT RICHARD E. JOHNSEN, AND JAMES ROWLEY, CHIEF … ADVISED SA ELMER LEE TODD, WFO, THAT THEY WERE UNABLE TO INDENTIFY RIFLE BULLET C ONE (# 399, which, before the Warren Commission had logged in as #399, was called “C ONE”), BY INSPECTION (capitals in original). [Fig. 6]

Convinced that we had overlooked some relevant files, we cast about for additional corroboration of what was in CE # 2011. There should, for example, have been some original “302s ” – the raw FBI field reports from the Agent Odum’s interviews with Tomlinson and Wright on June 12, 1964. There should also have been one from Agent Todd’s interviews with Secret Service Agents Johnsen and Rowley on June 24, 1964. Perhaps somewhere in those, we thought, we would find Agent Odum reporting that Wright had detected a resemblance between the bullets. And perhaps we’d also find out whether Tomlinson, Wright, Johnsen or Rowley had supplied the Bureau with any additional descriptive details about the bullet.

Figure 6. Suppressed 1964 FBI report detailing that neither of the Secret Service agents who handled “#399” on 11/22/63 could later identify it.

In early 1998, we asked a research associate, Ms. Cathy Cunningham, to scour the National Archives for any additional files that might shed light on this story. She looked but found none. We contacted the JFK Review Board’s T. Jeremy Gunn for help. [Fig. 7] On May 18, 1998, the Review Board’s Eileen Sullivan, writing on Gunn’s behalf, answered, saying: “[W]e have attempted, unsuccessfully, to find any additional records that would account for the problem you suggest.”[10] [Fig. 8] Undaunted, one of us wrote the FBI directly, and was referred to the National Archives, and so then wrote Mr. Steve Tilley at the National Archives. [Fig. 9]

On Mr. Tilley’s behalf, Mr. Stuart Culy, an archivist at the National Archives, made a search. On July 16, 1999, Mr. Culy wrote that he searched for the FBI records within the HSCA files as well as in the FBI records, all without success. He was able to determine, however, that the serial numbers on the FBI documents ran “concurrently, with no gaps, which indicated that no material is missing from these files.”[11] [Fig. 10] In other words, the earliest and apparently the only FBI report said nothing about either Tomlinson or Wright seeing a similarity between the bullet found at the hospital and the bullet later in evidence, CE #399. Nor did agent Bardwell Odum’s name show up in any of the files.

[editor’s note: Dr. Aguilar followed up in 2005 with the National Archives, asking them in letters dated March 2 and March 7 to search for any FBI “302” reports that would have been generated from CE399 being shown to those who handled it. On March 17, 2005 David Mengel of NARA wrote back reporting that additional searches had not uncovered any such reports.]

Stymied, author Aguilar turned to his co-author. “What does Odum have to say about it?” Thompson asked.

“Odum? How the hell do I know? Is he still alive?”

“I’ll find out,” he promised.

Less than an hour later, Thompson had located Mr. Bardwell Odum’s home address and phone number. Aguilar phoned him on September 12, 2002. He was still alive and well and living in a suburb of Dallas. The 82-year old was alert and quick-witted on the phone and he regaled Aguilar with fond memories of his service in the Bureau. Finally, the Kennedy case came up and Odum agreed to help interpret some of the conflicts in the records. Two weeks after mailing Odum the relevant files – CE # 2011, the three-page FBI memo dated July 7, 1964, and the “FBI AIRTEL” memo dated June 12, 1964, Aguilar called him back.

Mr. Odum told Aguilar, “I didn’t show it [#399] to anybody at Parkland. I didn’t have any bullet … I don’t think I ever saw it even.” [Fig. 11] Unwilling to leave it at that, both authors paid Mr. Odum a visit in his Dallas home on November 21, 2002. The same alert, friendly man on the phone greeted us warmly and led us to a comfortable family room. To ensure no misunderstanding, we laid out before Mr. Odum all the relevant documents and read aloud from them.

Again, Mr. Odum said that he had never had any bullet related to the Kennedy assassination in his possession, whether during the FBI’s investigation in 1964 or at any other time. Asked whether he might have forgotten the episode, Mr. Odum remarked that he doubted he would have ever forgotten investigating so important a piece of evidence. But even if he had done the work, and later forgotten about it, he said he would certainly have turned in a “302” report covering something that important. Odum’s sensible comment had the ring of truth. For not only was Odum’s name absent from the FBI’s once secret files, it was also it difficult to imagine a motive for him to besmirch the reputation of the agency he had worked for and admired.

Figure 11. Recorded interview with FBI Agent Bardwell Odum, in which he denies he ever had C.E. #399 in his possession.

Thus, the July 1964 FBI memo that became Commission Exhibit #2011 claims that Tomlinson and Wright said they saw a resemblance between #399 and the bullet they picked up on the day JFK died. However, the FBI agent who is supposed to have gotten that admission, Bardwell Odum, and the Bureau’s own once-secret records, don’t back up #2011. Those records say only that neither Tomlinson nor Wright was able to identify the bullet in question, a comment that leaves the impression they saw no resemblance. That impression is strengthened by the fact that Wright told one of the authors in 1966 the bullets were dissimilar. Thus, Thompson’s surprising discovery about Wright, which might have been dismissed in favor of the earlier FBI evidence in #2011, now finds at least some support in an even earlier, suppressed FBI memo, and the living memory of a key, former FBI agent provides further, indirect corroboration.

Missing 302s?

But the newly declassified FBI memos from June 1964 lead to another unexplained mystery. Neither are the 302 reports that would have been written by the agents who investigated #399’s chain of possession in both Dallas and Washington. The authors were tempted to wonder if the June memos were but expedient fabrications, with absolutely no 302s whatsoever backing them up.

But a declassified routing slip turned up by John Hunt seems to prove that the FBI did in fact act on the Commission’s formal request, as outlined in # 2011, to run down #399s chain of possession. The routing slip discloses that the bullet was sent from Washington to Dallas on 6/2/64 and returned to Washington on 6/22/64. Then on 6/24/64, it was checked out to FBI Agent Todd. [Fig. 12] What transpired during these episodes? If the Bureau went to these lengths, it seems quite likely that Bardwell Odum, or some other agent in Dallas, would have submitted one or more 302s on what was found, and so would Agent Elmer Todd in Washington. But there are none in the files. The trail ends here with an unexplained, and perhaps important, gap left in the record.

Figure 12. FBI routing slip. Note that #399 was sent from Washington to Dallas and back again, and that FBI agent Todd checked out the bullet on 6/24/64, the day it was reported the Secret Service Agents told Todd they could not identify #399. [See Fig. 5 (page 1, page 2) and Fig. 6.] (Courtesy of John Hunt)

Besides this unexplained gap, another interesting question remains: If the FBI did in fact adjust Tomlinson and Wright’s testimonies with a bogus claim of bullet similarity, why didn’t it also adjust Johnsen and Rowley’s? While it is unlikely a certain answer to this question will ever be found, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the FBI authors of #2011 would have been more reluctant to embroider the official statements of the head of the Secret Service in Washington than they would the comments of a couple of hospital employees in Dallas.

Summary

“In a memo to the Warren Commission [C. E. #2011] concerning its investigation of the chain of possession of C.E. #399, the FBI reported that two Parkland Hospital eyewitnesses, Darrell Tomlinson and O. P. Wright, said C.E. #399 resembled the bullet they discovered on the day JFK died. But the FBI agent who is supposed to have interviewed both men and the Bureau’s own suppressed records contradict the FBI’s public memo. Agent Odum denied his role, and the FBI’s earliest, suppressed files say only that neither Tomlinson nor Wright was able to identify the bullet in question. This suppressed file implies the hospital witnesses saw no resemblance, which is precisely what Wright told one of the authors in 1967.

What we are left with is the FBI having reported a solid chain of possession for #399 to the Warren Commission. But the links in the FBI’s chain appear to be anything but solid. Bardwell Odum, one of the key links, says he was never in the chain at all and the FBI’s own, suppressed records tend to back him up. Inexplicably, the chain also lacks other important links: FBI 302s, reports from the agents in the field who, there is ample reason to suppose, did actually trace #399 in Dallas and in Washington. Suppressed FBI records and recent investigations thus suggest that not only is the FBI’s file incomplete, but also that one of the authors may have been right when he reported in 1967 that the bullet found in Dallas did not look like a bullet that could have come from Oswald’s rifle.”~Gary Aguilar and Josiah Thompsonhttp://www.history-matters.com/essays/frameup/EvenMoreMagical/EvenMoreMagical.htm
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How does this relate to JFK? Look into Dr John Newman; ‘Where Angels Tread Lightly’.
Newman is of course an experienced and expert intelligence professional dealing with, linguistics, cryptology, and deep analysis. His books on Oswald and the CIA & JFK and Vietnam are renowned for their excellence and critical prescience.
. . . . .Exit Strategy: In 1963, JFK ordered a complete withdrawal from Vietnam
James K. Galbraith – September 01, 2003http://bostonreview.net/us/galbraith-exit-strategy-vietnam
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National Security Action Memorandum 263 – Intro
Prior to the declassification of various formerly TOP SECRET documents there was a widely held misconception that JFK was responsible for having involved the United States in the Vietnam war—not responsible so much for beginning the war, but responsible for having escalated it.
One document that clearly refutes such a claim, NSAM 263, appears on the left.

However, there is considerable “built in” mystery surrounding this document, as well. The document is itself more “cover letter”[1] than anything else because it does not delineate the contents of the reference contained therein, namely, the McNamara-Taylor Report (Section I B [1-3])*.

That section of the McNamara-Taylor Report, to which NSAM 263 refers and therefore incorporates by reference, [particularly items 2 and 3] goes to the heart JFK’s policy to withdraw from Vietnam and is crucial to appreciating its significance.

Note that there is nothing ambiguous in the wording: JFK was withdrawing from Vietnam by adopting a policy and implementing a strategy to transfer the US military’s mission in Vietnam to the Government of South Vietnam by the end of 1965.
NSAM 263
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Mrs Judge worked as an analyst and accounting for the military. She did ‘projection studies’ for the numbers of US troops that would be necessary for projected conflicts. This was a high level position that took many years of experience and expertise. The relevant information she revealed to her son John, was that there were orders given by the Kennedy adm. in 1963 to radically reduce the numbers of military personnel from the current numbers she was projecting, that was for the most part for the buildup of the military in Southeast Asia. There is a hint here as to how these projections were normally a Pentagon product.

John Newman is very detailed and precise on what was happening on that topic. The top brass was simply lying to Kennedy.
In 62 Kennedy was first aware of and remarked that – “So Vietnam, is the real agenda, not Laos”, when he read a memo from Landsdale defining what a mess Vietnam had become, and the large geopolitical ramifications of what was going on there.
Kenedy had not been briefed at all on Vietnam! Eisenhower had not warned him of the debacle rising up there… the military industrial complex has been playing the presidents since at least Woodrow Wilson. Kennedy was too smart for that game. He figured out fairly quickly after checking around about this Landsdale report, that the military brass was conning him. Of course this is a dangerous political game from the get-go. Kennedy knew he was playing with fire, and that to get foreign policy back in the hand of the civilian government was going to be a treacherous challenge.
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“Mary Cooley Judge, was instructed just three days after Kennedy assassination to revise upward the Pentagon’s personnel needs for the Vietnam War-era draft under incoming President Lyndon Johnson.
Judge’s late mother had been a Pentagon specialist in planning to fulfill the nation’s personnel needs via the draft. One of Judge’s disclosures was that his mother, Mary Cooley Judge, was instructed just three days after Kennedy assassination to revise upward the Pentagon’s personnel needs for the Vietnam War-era draft under incoming President Lyndon Johnson.”
“They [the Joint Chiefs of Staff] told her on Nov. 25, 1963 that the war in Vietnam would last for 10 years and that 57,000 Americans would die, and to figure that in.”~John Judgehttp://www.justice-integrity.org/faq/683-memorial-for-civic-activist-john-judge-revives-legacy
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Judge’s best estimate, he has told interviewers, was the Joint Chiefs of Staff played a role in organizing the JFK killing and a cover-up. “I don’t think this is an insoluble parlor mystery,” he once told the Dallas Morning News.
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“The Role of deep-cover CIA officer, Trenton Parker, has been described in earlier pages, and his function in the CIA’s counter-intelligence unit, Pegasus. Parker had stated to me earlier that a CIA faction was responsible for the murder of JFK … During an August 21, 1993, conversation, in response to my questions, Parker said that his Pegasus group had tape recordings of plans to assassinate Kennedy. I asked him, “What group were these tapes identifying?” Parker replied: “Rockefeller, Allen Dulles, Johnson of Texas, George Bush, and J. Edgar Hoover.” I asked, “What was the nature of the conversation on these tapes?”

I don’t have the tapes now, because all the tape recordings were turned over to [Congressman] Larry McDonald. But I listened to the tape recordings and there were conversations between Rockefeller, [J. Edgar] Hoover, where [Nelson] Rockefeller asks, “Are we going to have any problems?” And he said, “No, we aren’t going to have any problems. I checked with Dulles. If they do their job we’ll do our job.” There are a whole bunch of tapes, because Hoover didn’t realize that his phone has been tapped. [Defrauding America, Rodney Stich, 3rd edition p. 638-639]http://lyndonjohnsonmurderedjfk.blogspot.com/2011_12_01_archive.html
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THE DEVIL’S CHESSBOARD
Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government
by David Talbot

KIRKUS REVIEW

Former Salon founding editor-in-chief Talbot (Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror and Deliverance in the City of Love, 2012, etc.) shares his extensive knowledge and intense investigations of American politics with a frightening biography of power, manipulation, and outright treason.

The story of Allen Dulles (1893-1969), his brother John Foster, and the power elite that ran Washington, D.C., following World War II is the stuff of spy fiction, but it reaches even further beyond to an underworld of unaccountable authority. Dulles’ career began in the New York law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, where he built a powerful client list. During wartime in Switzerland, he worked to protect his clients’ corporations and build his own organization. In direct opposition to Franklin Roosevelt’s policy, he sought a separate peace with the Germans to use them to fight communism. Talbot delivers a variety of thrilling stories about Dulles that boggle the mind, from skimming funds from the Marshall Plan to using Richard Nixon as his mouthpiece in Congress. It is really about the power elite, the corporate executives, government leaders, and top military officials who controlled the world. They protected corporate interests in Iran, Guatemala, and elsewhere, and they fomented revolutions, experimented in mind control, and assassinated those who got in their way. With John Foster as secretary of state, this “fraternity of the successful” enforced a Pax Americana by terror and intimidation, always invoking national security and often blatantly disobeying policy guidelines. The author asserts that the Bay of Pigs was an intentional failure, meant to force John F. Kennedy to invade Cuba and retrieve corporate properties. Even out of office, Dulles’ conspiracies continued. Talbot also delves into CIA involvement in Kennedy’s assassination. Ultimately, the blatant manipulative activities of the Dulles brothers will shock most readers.https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/david-talbot/the-devils-chessboard/
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Editorial Review From Library Journal
In this book, DiEugenio, who has been investigating the Kennedy assassination for ten years, expands on the major points brought out in JFK , the Oliver Stone movie. Both Stone and DiEugenio agree with Jim Garrison’s findings that the assassination was the result of a conspiracy, that members of the U.S. intelligence community were involved, that Kennedy was assassinated to allow U.S. foreign policy to be changed, and that the assassination amounted to a coup d’etat. While DiEugenio discusses Kennedy’s rocky relationship with the CIA, he focuses on the Clay Shaw trial and the media’s unfair depiction of Garrison as a crank. DiEugenio also points out that in 1975, both the Church Committee and the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded, as had Garrison, that Lee Harvey Oswald was linked with the CIA and Cuban exiles. The book is thoroughly documented with endnotes, appendixes, and a bibliography of over 200 items. While no new revelations are offered, DiEugenio’s impeccable research and clearly written analysis makes this a good choice for most libraries. Photos not seen. Other recent books on the Kennedy assassination are Mark North’s Act of Treason and Mark Lane’s Plausible Denial , both LJ 11/1/91.–Ed.
– Gary D. Barber, SUNY at Fredonia Lib.http://www.amazon.com/Destiny-Betrayed-Cuba-Garrison-Case/dp/1620870568
Any logic minded person needs to ask themselves, “Why would the CIA have a ‘Garrison Group’ complete with a four pronged approach to dismember Garrison’s case that included illegal maneuverings if an unattached lone nut killed JFK?”
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“But I will tell you this, that when the record comes out, we will find that there was never a photograph taken of Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City. We will find out that Lee Harvey Oswald never visited, let me put it, that is a categorical statement, there, there, we will find out there is no evidence, first of all no proof of that. Second there is no evidence to show that Lee Harvey Oswald visited the Soviet embassy.”
– David Phillips, as quoted by Mark Lane

Mexico City and Langley
“One reason for the Commission’s ignorance about the Oswald file— and the subsequent importance of Mexico City— is that Helms actually appointed Angleton to be the main liaison to the Commission. Unlike his predecessor in that spot, John Whitten, Angleton tried to accent Oswald’s Russian period for the Commission. Whitten wanted to highlight the Cuban connection. It appears Helms did not wish that dangerous ground to be explored.10 He therefore brought in Angleton to be the CIA’s chief interface for the Commission.11 Since Angleton and Dulles were close colleagues from the 1940s, Dulles tipped off his friend as to what queries they would get about Oswald from the Commission. Since there had been a rumor that Oswald was an FBI agent, Dulles informed Angleton in advance as to what the Commission queries would likely be about Oswald’s possible intelligence ties. Then Angleton and William Sullivan of the FBI rehearsed and unified their responses to deny any intelligence connection to the alleged assassin.12 This was an important part of the cover up since it curtailed any inquiry into the question of whether or not agent Oswald was completing a mission in Mexico that he began in New Orleans. That is, was he further discrediting the FPCC by associating with communist foreign consulates and trying to gain transport to Cuba? What made this even more crucial is the fact that there was an “operational interest” in Oswald held by a handful of officers in the Special Affairs Staff (SAS) of the CIA just weeks before the Kennedy assassination.13 This group was involved with what was left of the Kennedy campaign against Cuba, which was not very much. But as far as the Warren Commission inquiry into Mexico City goes, we have established two key points: 1.) Slawson was much too trusting of the Agency, and 2.) Angleton and Dulles were determined to keep clues about any preexisting relationship between Oswald and the CIA concealed.”http://www.ctka.net/2015/JimDMexicoCity/DestinyBetrayed16.html
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“Because of all these problems, the Commission decided that Odio’s story could not be accepted. At any cost. So in addition to having Hoover concoct a jerry rigged cover story about William Seymour, Loran Hall, and Lawrence Howard being the three men at her door— which they were not— the Commission did something else. After Wesley Liebeler took her testimony in Dallas, he invited her out to dinner with an acquaintance of his. He kept on threatening her with a polygraph test.45 He then stated something that Odio found unforgettable. He said, “Well, you know if we do find out that this is a conspiracy you know that we have orders from Chief Justice Warren to cover this thing up.”46 When Gaeton Fonzi heard this from her his eyebrows arched. He asked, “Liebeler said that?” To which Odio said, “Yes sir, I could swear on that.” Liebeler then invited her up to his room at the hotel on the pretense of looking at some pictures. Odio described what happened next to Fonzi and the Church Committee:

Not only that, he invited me to his room upstairs to see some pictures. I did go, I went to his room. I wanted to see how far a government investigator would go and what they were trying to do to a witness …. He showed me pictures, he made advances, yes, but I told him he was crazy.47
Liebeler wasn’t through. To show her what kind of operation the Commission really was, he told her that they had seen her picture and joked about it at the Warren Commission. They said things like what a pretty girl you are going to see Jim. Besides the professional ethics involved in such a thing, this points to a tactic used by the Commission to discount Odio. For HSCA staff lawyer Bill Triplett told this author that the reason that chairman Earl Warren did not believe Sylvia Odio is that she was some kind of a “loose woman.”48 As the reader can see, this was not the case. Yet this was the tactic Liebeler was going to use. This is how desperate the Commission was to discredit a dangerous witness like Odio.
[…]
This seems to have been part of the Helms-Angleton agenda. For Lopez and Hardway did put together a chart of the phone calls attributed to Oswald. One look at the chart, which lists the languages spoken, and it immediately raises questions about who made them. For it has Oswald speaking fluent Spanish,57 which no one has ever said Oswald did. Further, the HSCA report says that Oswald spoke poor, broken Russian.58 Yet both Marina Oswald and George DeMohresnchildt said Oswald spoke Russian quite well upon his return to the United States. Further, professional translator Peter Gregory thought Oswald was fluent enough to give him a letter certifying Oswald’s ability to serve as a translator.59 But if that were not enough, there is a serious problem that Garrison spoke about in his Playboy interview. The CIA had multiple still cameras set up outside the Cuban embassy in Mexico City to catch everyone coming out of and going inside in order to secure a visa to Cuba. When, at the request of the Commission, the FBI asked the CIA for a photo of Oswald entering the consulate, they got Commission Exhibit 237. This is a picture of a husky six footer with a crew-cut. Obviously not Oswald. He is not identified in the photo so he came to be known as the “Mystery Man.”60 The Commission just printed the picture as “Photograph of an Unidentified Man” in Volume 16. In other words, we are supposed to believe the following: In Oswald’s combined five visits to the Cuban consulate and Soviet consulate, the battery of CIA cameras failed to get even one picture of him entering or leaving. In other words, they went zero for ten. And the camera right outside the Cuban consulate was pulse activated. That is it was, “A camera with a shutter that is automatically tripped by a triggering device activated by changes in light density.”61 How could a camera that sensitive miss Oswald six times?”~Jim DiEugeniohttp://www.ctka.net/2015/JimDMexicoCity/DestinyBetrayed16.html
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To say this deception about Oswald in Mexico worked well does not begin to do it justice. For at the first meeting of the Warren Commission the former DA of Alameda County California, Earl Warren, came out as meek as a lamb:

He did not want the Commission to employ any of their own investigators.
He did not want the Commission to gather evidence. Instead he wished for them to rely on reports made by other agencies like the FBI and Secret Service.
He did not want their hearings to be public. He did not want to employ the power of subpoena.
Incredibly, he did not even want to call any witnesses. He wanted to rely on interviews done by other agencies.
He then made a very curious comment, “Meetings where witnesses would be brought in would retard rather than help our investigation.” -Executive Session transcript of the Warren Commission, December 5, 1963, pp. 1– 3.
~Jim DiEugenio

Anne Goodpasture told Jeremy Gunn of the ARRB that she had worked at one point during her CIA career for James Angleton as a counterintelligence officer, and that it was the CI group that sent her to Mexico City in 1957.8 Asked to explain the difference between CE (counterespionage) and CI (counterintelligence), Goodpasture replied, “Counterespionage was the activity and Counterintelligence was the product.”http://www.ctka.net/pr900-ang.html
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Lane’s book showed that the Commission could not have been working in good faith. He did this in two related ways. First, he brought into the gravest doubt every major conclusion of the Commission. Second, he showed that the Commission had in its hands evidence that contradicted their conclusions. (Sylvia Meagher did the same in her wonderful Accessories After the Fact, published in 1967.) And Meagher was quite disappointed in Epstein’s performance when it came to debating the opposition. In a letter she circulated in 1966, Meagher expressed her chagrin over a debate televised in New York between Epstein and Commission counsel Wesley Liebeler. She wrote privately that “Epstein was absolutely disastrous. I really let him have it the next morning and haven’t heard from him since. I learned later that at least three other people afterwards gave him a tongue-lashing for his extremely weak position, his capitulating and almost apologizing to Liebeler. (Letter of 8/30/66) On the other hand, when Lane debated Liebeler at UCLA on January 25, 1967, by most accounts he obliterated him.

The questions about Epstein deepened around the time of the Garrison investigation. First, Epstein’s voice appeared on a record album that accompanied the book The Scavengers and Critics of the Warren Report. This should not be passed over lightly, for this 1967 book was the first one to go after the critics on a personal and demeaning level, making them out to be a bunch of kooks and eccentrics who did what they did out of some psychological or other weirdness. Schiller was later exposed by declassified documents as being a chronic FBI informant on the Kennedy case. On the album, entitled The Controversy, Epstein joins in the ridicule of the critics. Around this same time period, Epstein appeared in a debate with Salandria, arguing the case against Oswald. Salandria was so outraged that after the debate, he asked if Epstein had gone over to the other side.

Imperialism – The Enemy of Freedom
Senator John F Kennedy July 2, 1957

Mr. KENNEDY: “Mr. President, the most powerful single force in the world today is neither communism nor capitalism, neither the H-bomb nor the guided missile it is man’s eternal desire to be free and independent. The great enemy of that tremendous force of freedom is called, for want of a more precise term, imperialism – and today that means Soviet imperialism and, whether we like it or not, and though they are not to be equated, Western imperialism.
Thus the single most important test of American foreign policy today is how we meet the challenge of imperialism, what we do to further man’s desire to be free. On this test more than any other, this Nation shall be critically judged by the uncommitted millions in Asia and Africa, and anxiously watched by the still hopeful lovers of freedom behind the Iron Curtain. If we fail to meet the challenge of either Soviet or Western imperialism, then no amount of foreign aid, no aggrandizement of armaments, no new pacts or doctrines or high-level conferences can prevent further setbacks to our course and to our security.
I am concerned today that we are failing to meet the challenge of imperialism – on both counts – and thus failing in our responsibilities to the free world. I propose, therefore, as the Senate and the Nation prepare to commemorate the 181st anniversary of man’s noblest expression against political repression, to begin a two-part series of speeches, examining America’s role in the continuing struggles for independence that strain today against the forces of imperialism within both the Soviet and Western worlds. My intention is to talk not of general principles, but of specific cases – to propose not partisan criticisms but what I hope will be constructive solutions.
There are many cases of the clash between independence and imperialism in the Soviet world that demand our attention. One, above all the rest, is critically outstanding today – Poland.
The Secretary of State, in his morning news conference, speaking on this subject, suggested that, if people want to do something about the examples of colonialism, they should consider such examples as Soviet-ruled Lithuania and the satellite countries of Czechoslovakia, Poland, and others.
I agree with him. For that reason, within 2 weeks I hope to speak upon an issue which I think stands above all the others; namely, the country of Poland.
There are many cases of the clash between independence and imperialism in the Western World that demand our attention. But again, one, above all the rest, is critically outstanding today – Algeria.
I shall speak this afternoon of our failures and of our future in Algeria and north Africa – and I shall speak of Poland in a later address to this body.”http://www.jfklink.com/speeches/jfk/congress/jfk020757_imperialism.html
. . . . .
In 1957 Kennedy was already the “radical” visionary that became president in 1960.
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In July 1960, John F. Kennedy received a letter from Africa congratulating
him on winning the Democratic Party’s nomination for the upcoming American
presidential election. A plea for help accompanied the congratulation.
“Everywhere there are more and more [unintelligible word] Communists! Everywhere
Western prestige has slipped. So for heaven’s sake change the image of America
before its too late!”1 The Democratic nominee had already established a
reputation across Africa as a sympathetic supporter of African nationalism, who
if elected would realign Washington’s priorities toward the continent. Once in
office, Kennedy indeed made changing the image of America in the Third World a
top priority of his administration.
-Introduction by Philip E. Muehlenbeck

By 1958 Kennedy had become the chairman of the Senate’s Foreign Relations
African subcommittee and continually pressed the White House with the importance
of initiating contact with African nationalist leaders. “Call it nationalism,
call it anti-colonialism, call it what you will, the word is out and spreading
like wildfire in nearly a thousand languages and dialects – that it is no longer
necessary to remain forever in bondage.”15 “After all,” Kennedy mused, “it was in
our schools that some of the most renowned African leaders learned…the virtues of
representative government, widespread education, and economic opportunity. These
are the ideas and ideals that have caused a revolution.”
–JFK: ORDEAL IN AFRICA
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Exclusive: The intensive media coverage of the half-century anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s murder was long on hype and emotion but short on explaining how revolutionary JFK’s foreign policy was in his extraordinary support for Third World nationalists, as Jim DiEugenio explains.
[…]
Who Was Gullion?

The man Kennedy chose to be his ambassador to Congo was Edmund Gullion, who was the one who had altered Kennedy’s consciousness about Third World nationalism. There are some writers who would maintain that perhaps no other person had as much influence on the evolution of Kennedy’s foreign policy thinking as did Gullion. Yet, Gullion’s name is not in the index to either of Dallek’s books on Kennedy.

Edmund Gullion entered the State Department in the late 1930s. His first assignment was to Marseilles, France, where he became fluent in the French language and was then transferred to French Indochina during France’s struggle to re-colonize the area after World War II.

Kennedy briefly met Gullion in Washington in the late 1940s when the aspiring young politician needed some information for a speech on foreign policy. In 1951, when the 34-year-old congressman flew into Saigon, he decided to look up Gullion. In the midst of France’s long and bloody war to take back Indochina, one that then had been going on for five years, Gullion’s point of view was unique among American diplomats and jarringly candid.

As Thurston Clarke described the rooftop restaurant meeting, Gullion told Kennedy that France could never win the war. Ho Chi Minh had inspired tens of thousands of Viet Minh to the point they would rather die than return to a state of French colonialism. France could never win a war of attrition like that, because the home front would not support it.

This meeting had an immediate impact on young Kennedy. When he returned home, he began making speeches that highlighted these thoughts which were underscored by the Viet Minh’s eventual defeat of the French colonial forces in 1954. In criticizing the U.S. Establishment’s view of these anti-colonial struggles, Kennedy did not play favorites. He criticized Democrats as well as Republicans who failed to see that the United States had to have a positive appeal to the Third World. There had to be something more than just anti-communism.

For instance, in a speech Kennedy gave during the 1956 presidential campaign for Adlai Stevenson, the then-Massachusetts senator said: “The Afro-Asian revolution of nationalism, the revolt against colonialism, the determination of people to control their national destinies. … In my opinion, the tragic failure of both Republican and Democratic administrations since World War II to comprehend the nature of this revolution, and its potentialities for good and evil, had reaped a bitter harvest today — and it is by rights and by necessity a major foreign policy campaign issue that has nothing to do with anti-communism.”
By Jim DiEugeniohttps://consortiumnews.com/2013/11/25/jfks-embrace-of-third-world-nationalists/
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With his ambassadors in place and building from the recommendations of his
African task force, President Kennedy implemented a four-pronged approach to
court African nationalism. His policy was to oppose European colonialism, accept
African non-alignment, initiate economic programs to help aid in Africa’s
development, and launch personal diplomacy to build a working relationship
between himself and the leaders of Africa’s independence movement.
The Kennedy administration made a concerted effort to disengage itself from
the African policies of its European allies. Making a huge departure in U.S.
foreign policy, the young President resolutely declared that America was on the
side of those seeking independence in the Third World. “Their revolution is the
greatest in human history. They seek an end to injustice, tyranny, and
exploitation.”41
Within a month of taking office, President Kennedy had met with the National
Security Council to revise the operating procedures for U.S. policy toward
Africa. Kennedy argued that it was imperative for Washington to discard the
Eisenhower policy of deferring U.S. African policy to its European allies. On
February 13 1961, Kennedy signed National Security Action Memorandum No. 16,
which provided “flexibility for the United States to supplement Western support
to newly-independent areas whenever such action constitutes a revision of State
interest.”42 Writing to the President two days later, Secretary of State Dean
Rusk noted that the new policy would allow the White House the elasticity to
pursue its own African policy.43
. . . . .
39 William Attwood, The Twilight Struggle: : Tales of the Cold War (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1987), p. 225. 40 Sorensen, Kennedy, p. 279 and Attwood, The Twilight Struggle, p. 231. 41 Public Papers of the President’s of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1961 (Washington D.C.: United States Governmental
Printing Office, 1962), p. 397.
42 National Security Action Memorandum No. 16, 13 February 1961. General Records of the Department of State, Box 1 “National
Security Action Memo Files, 1961-1968”, Record Group 59, NA.
43 Memorandum from Secretary of State Dean Rusk to President John F. Kennedy, 15 February 1961., ibid.http://www.jmu.edu/history/mhr/wm_library/2004_-_1_Philip_E._Muehlenbeck.pdf
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Since the end of the Cold War, the American foreign policy establishment has
increasingly shown less desire to court the Third World. In fact, contemporary
U.S. foreign policy is very condescending towards the developing world.
Washington may be making a mistake by seemingly dismissing the growing strength
of anti-Americanism throughout the world. The importance of courting Third World
nationalism is as important today as Kennedy believed it to have been in the
early 1960s. Perhaps future American policy makers can learn a lesson from John
F. Kennedy’s policy of courting African nationalism. The goodwill that was
created by his strategy of befriending nationalists has proven to be more
effective and long lasting than trying to curry favor through the use of economic
or military aid. If Third World nationalists turn bitter against the “New World
Order” currently being constructed by Washington, “then the reason will be that
the Western powers, by indifference or lack of imagination, have failed to see
that it is their own future that is at stake.”~JFK quoted by William Attwood (ibid)
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“It is particularly important, inasmuch as Hungary will be a primary issue at the United Nations meeting this fall, that the United States clear the air and take a clear position on this issue, on which we have been vulnerable in the past. And we must make it abundantly clear to the French as well as the North Africans that we seek no economic advantages for ourselves in that area, no opportunities to replace French economic ties or exploit African resources.
If we are to secure the friendship of the Arab, the African, and the Asian – and we must, despite what Mr. Dulles says about our not being in a popularity contest – we cannot hope to accomplish it solely by means of billion-dollar foreign aid programs. We cannot win their hearts by making them dependent upon our handouts. Nor can we keep them free by selling them free enterprise, by describing the perils of communism or the prosperity of the United States, or limiting our dealings to military pacts. No, the strength of our appeal to these key populations – and it is rightfully our appeal, and not that of the Communists – lies in our traditional and deeply felt philosophy of freedom and independence for all peoples everywhere.
Perhaps it is already too late for the United States to save the West from total catastrophe in Algeria. Perhaps it is too late to abandon our negative policies on these issues, to repudiate the decades of anti-Western suspicion, to press firmly but boldly for a new generation of friendship among equal and independent states. But we dare not fail to make the effort.”~Senator John F. Kennedy, 1957
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“We know the CIA was involved, and the Mafia. We all know that.”
— Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Richard Goodwin, quoted in David Talbot’s “Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years,” [p. 303].
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Bill Clarke has been stuck in a delirium since he was brainwashed in basic training.
I know and have known dozens of Vietnam Vets, many friends from HS. To a person, every one of them is as constipated as Bill Clarke. They still haven’t passed that shit out of their psychological systems. They are in effect still in Vietnam emotionally.
Their shame and guilt is submerged. Anything that tugs on those pushes their panic buttons. That these slow burn emotions can be masked by learned rhetorical constructs that appear to be rational does not mitigate the fact that it is a form of psychic hysteria to refuse to open their eyes to what is clear and obvious to a rational mind.
The simple truth is that the war in southeast Asia was a war of aggression by primarily the United States. To deny this simple context of that war is pathological.
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“If you read Mr. Gaeton Fonzi’s fine book, The Last Investigation, you will learn that he traced the assassination to the CIA from which Mr. Dulles had been fired by President Kennedy. Must we not conclude therefore that Mr. Dulles, in seeking to cover up the possibility of Soviet involvement, had certain knowledge that Oswald was a patsy, and that the CIA had carried out the assassination? The CIA was the agency over which he had presided and from which he had been fired by President Kennedy for his betrayal of the President in the Bay of Pigs venture. Did not Allen Dulles have an interest in protecting the agency which had been so dear to him? Did he not have cause to hate the President for having fired him from the CIA and for the President’s courageous opposition to the military and intelligence services on Cold War policy? In appointing Allen Dulles to the Warren Commission, did not President Johnson demonstrate judgment that was so bad as to amount to misfeasance in office and to obstruction of justice?”
~Salandria
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This is from John le Carre’s introduction to a Pocket Books edition of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.”
Le Carre is writing about the damage done by double agents such as Kim Philby and George Blake, both KGB agents who were buried deep inside the British Secret Intelligence Service after World War II.”

This is what le Carre wrote: “Such an abject state of affairs was certainly reached by SIS in the high days of Blake and Philby, just as it was inflicted on the CIA by the paranoid influence of (James) Angleton himself, who, in the aftermath of discovering that he had been eating out of the hand of the KGB’s most successful double agent, spent the rest of his life trying to prove that the Agency, like the SIS, was being controlled by Moscow; and that its occasional successes were consequently no more than sweeteners tossed to it by the fiendish manipulators of the KGB. Angleton was wrong, but his effect on the CIA was as disastrous as if he had been right. Both services would have done much less damage to their countries, moral and financial, if they had simply been disbanded.”
~John Kirsch
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A new edition of Oswald and the CIA was published in 2008. Newman argues that James Angleton was probably the key figure in the assassination of John F. Kennedy: “In my view, whoever Oswald’s direct handler or handlers were, we must now seriously consider the possibility that Angleton was probably their general manager. No one else in the Agency had the access, the authority, and the diabolically ingenious mind to manage this sophisticated plot. No one else had the means necessary to plant the WWIII virus in Oswald’s files and keep it dormant for six weeks until the president’s assassination. Whoever those who were ultimately responsible for the decision to kill Kennedy were, their reach extended into the national intelligence apparatus to such a degree that they could call upon a person who knew its inner secrets and workings so well that he could design a failsafe mechanism into the fabric of the plot. The only person who could ensure that a national security cover-up of an apparent counterintelligence nightmare was the head of counterintelligence.”http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKnewmanJ.htm
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Carlyle Group’s Latest Acquisition: the JFK Library (!)
from Who What Why:

Some things you truly cannot make up. Like this: the museum and archives celebrating and exploring the life (if not really wanting to investigate the death) of John F. Kennedy is getting a facelift—courtesy of….the Carlyle Group.

This development was noted, without much fanfare, in a variety of major media. If there was a smidgen of irony, I missed it.
In June 2014, the Carlyle Group acquired the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.

Yet, consider this: The ultimate globe-girdling corporation is playing a major role in preserving the memory of a president who at the time of his death was engaged in what may be described as mortal combat with outfits not unlike Carlyle—if smaller and less global. (I write about this in my book Family of Secrets but you can learn a lot more about JFK versus the corporations in Donald Gibson’s Battling Wall Street: The Kennedy Presidency.)

“Armed with this historical perspective, on November 22, 1963, I began to examine the post-assassination events as they unfolded. I took note of the reports coming in about the alleged assassin. I wondered whether his alleged left-wing credentials were bona fide. Very early in my work in the peace movement, I learned that some ostensible peace activists were infiltrating government agent provocateurs who were not what they at first blush appeared to be. May I suggest that some of our critics of the Warren Report are government agents. Can we honestly expect that the powerful elements in our society who dispatched our President with that deadly Dealey Plaza fusillade and then sought to cover up the reasons why he was killed would leave to ordinary citizens to inform the public about the real meaning of the assassination of President Kennedy?
On November 23, 1963 I discussed the assassination with my then brother-in-law, Harold Feldman. I told him that we should keep our eyes focused on what if anything would happen to the suspected assassin that weekend. I said that if the suspect was killed during the weekend, then we would have to consider Oswald’s role to be that of a possible intelligence agent nd patsy. I told him if such happened, the assassination would have to be considered as the work of the very center of U.S. power.

I sensed that there was a need to be quick in formulating conclusions from the killing of Oswald. A successful political assassination is carried out to produce policy changes. Those policy changes generally take effect quickly. Consequently, it behooves a democratic citizenry to come promptly to their own reasoned conclusions about the killing of their head of state. Citizens cannot leave to their government, which under republican principals is their mere servant, to shape their thinking on such a vital subject. Nor can the citizenry await the work of the academic establishment before formulating its conclusions.

When Oswald was served up on camera as disposable Dealey Plaza flotsam and jetsam and was killed by Jack Ruby I saw a subtle signal of a high level conspiracy. There is every reason to think that intelligence agencies, when they choose a killer to dispose of a patsy, make that choice by exercising the same degree of care that they employ in selecting the patsy. Their choice of Jack Ruby much later would — by providing a fall-back position for the government — serve the interests of the assassins. As the Warren Report would unravel, a deceased Ruby’s past connections to the Mafia produced a false candidate for governmental apologists to designate as the power behind the killing.

Immediately following the assassination I began to collect news items about Lee Harvey Oswald. A pattern began to emerge. Oswald’s alleged defection to the Soviets, his alleged Castro leanings as the sole membe of a Fair Play for Cuba chapter in New Orleans, his posing with a rifle and a Trotskyist newspaper, his writings to the Communist Party USA, his study of the Russian language while in the Marine Corps, told me that he was not a genuine leftist, but rather was a U.S. intelligence agent.”
~Salandriahttp://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/27th_Issue/vs_text.html
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I think the JFK assassination is solved beyond reasonable doubt to have been a systemic hit by the National Security State. Whatever details one wants to quibble over beyond that finding is rather trivial in the larger picture.

The ‘who’ have been pretty well revealed as far as the action men are concerned. I think what needs to be grasped beyond that, as Prouty points out; the National Security State is a euphemismm in that it is not actually “national”, it is in fact global. There is a global military-industrial-intelligence apparatus, and has been for more than a century.
This is where we launch from Prouty’s pad into Antony Sutton and Carroll Quigley et,al.
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“On October 23, 1964, Arlen Specter was quoted in the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin regarding what he had told a Bar Association meeting at which I had questioned him. He was quoted as stating: “The people are going to have to rely on the conclusions and the stature of the men of the Commission.”

I replied to him in my November 2, 1964 article in The Legal Intelliaencer: ‘We know that Mr. Specter did not mean by the above statement that the Warren Commission was ever meant to be construed as a “ministry of truth.” Nor would the members of the Commission, as public servants in a democracy, ever consider that their “stature” insulated their interpretations and findings from public criticism.’

In fact Specter was telling us that evidence had to give way to stature. He was instructing us that he and the Commission were in reality a ministry of truth and could and would criminally conceal the truth with impunity.

But let us posit arguendo that the Warren Commission and its staff had considered themselves a benevolent ministry of truth. Let us assume that they had conceived of themselves as having spared us from a thermonuclear war. Although there was no evidence when the Warren Report was issued, that such a war was imminent. But with the demise of the Soviet Union, that is no longer a legitimate concern. Can we not now ask why Senator Specter should not come clean and finally tell us why the Warren Commission had concealed the truth? But to ask the question is to answer it. Senator Spector must in a criminal fashion continue to serve the national interest as he sees it by obstructing justice in order to conceal that we are in the same banana-republic status that we were as of November 22, 1963.”~Salandria
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“In my January, 1965 article in Liberation I reported that when Jacqueline Kennedy testified before the Commission she had spoken of the wounds inflicted on her husband. She above all was qualified to speak of these wounds, since she had been the first to see up close the terrible work of the butchers who had cut down her husband. But in the transcript of her testimony presented to the Commission, we were provided only with the comment: “Reference to the wounds deleted.”

J. Lee Rankin, the Commissions General Counsel, was reported in the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin of November 23rd, 1964, to have declared that Classified material involving national security was withheld from the volumes of transcript.” Does that not tell us in plain language that we were denied the testimony of the deposed first lady in order to protect the killers of her husband, our national security state? Had not J. Lee Rankin in assenting to such a crucial deletion committed the crime of obstruction of justice?”
~ibid (the question mark at the end is Salandria’s — I would have used a period.)
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“There is no rational manner in which we can strip away the guilt of the highest levels of our national security state. The government’s consistent criminal pattern of ignoring a whole series of data indicating conspiracy and consistently twisting the meaning of evidence to support a single assassin killing compels the conclusion that the U.S. national security state killed President Kennedy. President Kennedy himself had posited that he might be killed by the national security state, as reported in Paul B. Fay, Jr.’s book, The Pleasure of his Company. Given the simplicity of the above analysis, the conclusion is inescapable that the American civilian media failed in its First Amendment task of seriously examining the killing of President Kennedy by the military-intelligence community. The U.S. media chose instead to serve the interests of state. That rightfully earns them the title of accessories after the fact.”~Salandria
. . . . .
About the illustration: Diego Rivera, 1954, Gloriosa Victoria (Glorious Victory)
tempera on canvas, 2.6 x 4.5 m, Pushkin Museum. At the center of the painting, Secretary of State Foster Dulles shaking hands with Carlos Castillo Armas. CIA director, Allen Dulles, and the American Ambassador to Guatemala, John Peurifoy are giving away money among Guatemalan Army officers, while natives work as slaves filling up UFCO ships with bananas. At the Ambassador’s feet lies an anthropomorfed bomb with a smiling Eisenhower’s face. In the background archbishop Rossell y Arellano gives mass over the dead bodies of massacred workers.
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“The effect of the government’s deceit has been to create a confused and extremely protracted debate designed to hide the simple truth of a high level warfare-state conspiracy. The government has served on us, the people, who have always by a large majority disbelieved the Warren Report, a notice that we are powerless. President Kennedy, a popular, beloved world leader of independent wealth, was dispatched without a common-law inquest. Enormous evidence was released that he was killed by a conspiracy. Yet the government persisted in contending that the killing was accomplished either by a lone nut or by some Italian gangsters.

In providing us with a commitment to a sole assassin killing or an assassination by the Mafia, Castro, Soviet or low-level rogue U.S. group, while providing us with extensive evidence of a high-level conspiracy, the national security state seeks to paralyze our thinking processes. Through Orwellian doublethink the government successfully involved us in years of fruitless debate as to the microanalytic details of how the assassination was executed and what obscure meaning the assassination had on our lives. Through this Orwellian doublethink the government sends us clear signals. It instructs us that if bullets could remove a constitutionally-elected president, and the murderers go unpunished, then we should not take seriously U.S. politics. It instructs us that we should not entertain hopes of accomplishing a truthful explanation of the meaning of the killing.
[…]
For years, not satisfied with having merely killed President Kennedy, the U.S. media have been busy endeavoring to assassinate his character by publishing a series of books designed to demonstrate that he was a flawed and perverse person so that we might conclude that he deserved his fate. A man who had sacrificed his life for world peace was shot down and then pilloried with defamation for years by a contemptuous and arrogant U.S. establishment.

The assassination of President Kennedy and its handling by the government and its compliant media were designed to accomplish not only the firing by gunshots of a President, but also were aimed at mind-manipulation and paralysis of our people. The fact that we have been debating this assassination for thirty-five years demonstrates that the national security state has enjoyed considerable success in accomplishing its goal. By debating the meaning of the assassination of President Kennedy we have served the purpose of our military-intelligence complex to mystify the obvious.

What are we to do? We must accept as no mystery the question of why the assassination occurred. President Kennedy was killed for seeking to reduce the planet-threatening tensions of the Cold War. He was killed for accomplishing the test-ban treaty. He was killed for his eloquence in espousing peace. In his 1963 American University speech he urged:

…my fellow Americans, let us examine our attitude toward peace… And is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights — the right to live out our lives without fear of devastation — the right to breathe air as nature provided it — the right of future generations to a healthy existence? While we proceed to safeguard our national interests, let us also safeguard human interests. And the elimination of war and arms is clearly in the interest of both.”
President Kennedy was killed because he had refused to bomb and to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, although the Joint Chiefs and the CIA were much for this course of action. Later he had refused, when opposed by the Joint Chiefs and the CIA, to consent to invading Cuba during the missile crisis. Instead of invading Cuba, against the expressed wishes of the Joint Chiefs and the CIA, he had chosen to negotiate with the Soviets over a commitment not to invade Cuba. He had then moved for the normalization of relations with Cuba. Those relations have still to be normalized. He had established a back-channel communication system with the Soviets. Because of his quest for world peace and his struggle to preserve the human race from a devastating thermonuclear war, President John F. Kennedy was killed by the highest levels of our national security state.

Was President Kennedy’s Vietnam policy one of the reasons why he was killed? There has been much speculation and debate on what President Kennedy would or would not have done in Vietnam had he not been killed. If I were to engage in speculation, I would tend to believe that the man who twice refused to submit to the Joint Chiefs and the CIA on bombing and invading Cuba a mere ninety miles from our shore would not have consented to sending hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops half way around the world to slaughter Vietnamese peasants.

But there is no need to speculate on the issue of whether President Kennedy’s policy towards Vietnam was changed immediately following his death. It was. The historical record is clear. President Kennedy did order the beginning of a withdrawal of all U.S. personnel which withdrawal would be completed in two years. To undermine that policy, just two days after his assassination the CIA produced, as per assassination agnostic Professor Noam Chomsky in his book, Rethinking Camelot, “radically revised assumptions on which the withdrawal plans has been conditioned.”

Yes, Dealey Plaza’s crackling rifle fire was directly connected to the scorching of Vietnam flesh by napalm and the millions of deaths our invasion caused. For more on Vietnam and President Kennedy, my friend, Dr. Michael Morrissey, will have more to say in his future writings.
[…]
We can no longer afford to shield ourselves by asserting that the murder of President Kennedy is a mystery. There is no mystery regarding how, by whom, and why President Kennedy was killed. Only when we strip away our privileged cloak of denial about the truth of the killing will we be able to free ourselves for the hard global work of changing our unfair and brutal society to one that is more equitable and less violent.
Thank you.”~Vincent J. Salandria
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“What is lacking in this article is the fact that on September 20, 1967, the CIA held its first “Garrison Group Meeting” (No 1 – 20 September 1967). This high level, classified meeting was attended by the “Executive Director, General Counsel, Inspector General, Deputy Director for Plans, Mr. Raymond Rocca of CI Staff, Director of Security and Mr. Goodwin.”

“The Minutes of the Meeting read as follows:

“1) “Executive Director said that the Director has asked him to convene a group to consider the possible implications for the Agency emanating from New Orleans before, during, and after the trial of Clay Shaw.”

“2) “General Counsel discussed his dealings with Justice and the desire of Shaw’s lawyers to make contact with the Agency.”

“3) “[Raymond] Rocca [who was Jim Angleton’s chief lieutenant] felt that Garrison would indeed obtain a conviction of Shaw for conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy.”

“4) Executive Director said the group should level on two objectives: (a) what kind of action, if any, is available to the Agency, and (b) what actions should be taken inside the Agency to reassure the Director that we have the problem in focus. The possibility of Agency action should be examined from the timing of what can be done before the trial and what might be feasible during and after the trial. It was agreed that OGC and Rocca would make a detailed study of all the facts and consult with Justice as appropriate prior to the next meeting.”

“The meeting was chaired by my father – “F.W.M. Janney”

“So, as early as 1967, we learn here that ‘Rocca felt that Garrison would indeed obtain a conviction of Shaw for conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy.’ If this isn’t prima facie evidence that Clay Shaw was not only an asset of the CIA but was part of the conspiracy “to assassinate President Kennedy,” then I don’t know what else to say . . .

“When the Meyers were married and Cord worked for the CIA, their family became friends with the Janney family. Peter Janney’s father was a CIA analyst. The Janney children therefore knew the children of Cord and Mary Meyer. It is fairly clear from his description of her that young Peter Janney became enamored with Mary Meyer early in life. While playing baseball at her house he raced around to retrieve the ball and discovered her sunbathing nude. This is how he describes the scene: “She lay completely naked, her backside to the sun. I was breathless… and I stood there for what seemed to me a very long time, gawking. At the time, I had no words for the vision that I beheld….” (Janney, p. 12) If this is not enough, he then adds to it by saying this experience had left him “somehow irrevocably altered, even blessed.” (ibid) So, for Janney, seeing Mary Meyer’s nude backside was a quasi-religious experience that altered him permanently. To make this point even more clear, it is echoed when Janney learns that Mary Meyer is dead. He says he crawled up into bed in a fetal position. He adds that his sleep was fitful that night as he wrestled with the fact of her death. (p. 14) The problem with this early infatuation is that Janney kept and nurtured it his entire life. Anyone can see that by the way he approaches her. He doesn’t write about the woman. He caresses her in print. This is not a good attribute for an author. For it causes the loss of critical distance. As Dwight MacDonald once wrote about James Agee, a far superior writer to Janney, “The lover sees many interesting aspects of his love that others do not. But he also sees many interesting ones that aren’t there.” This is clearly the case here. For the aggrandizement of Mary Meyer in this book is both unprecedented and stupefying. If Janney could back it up with credible evidence, it would be one thing. He doesn’t. Therefore it gets to be offensive since it says more about Janney’s childhood wish fulfillment than it does about Mary Meyer.”~James DiEugenio
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Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam
by Frances FitzGerald
This landmark work, based on Frances FitzGerald’s own research and travels, takes us inside Vietnam-into the traditional, ancestor-worshiping villages and the corrupt crowded cities, into the conflicts between Communists and anti-Communists, Catholics and Buddhists, generals More…
and monks -and reveals the country as seen through Vietnamese eyes. With a clarity and authority unrivaled by any book before it or since, Fire in the Lake shows how America utterly and tragically misinterpreted the realities of Vietnam.

There are varied forms of showing submission in the hierarchies of animal species on this planet. For example in canine societies [packs], a dog will lie on it’s back and pee on itself as the accepted form of submission to another dog with superior power and rank.

While I would in no sense compare Vincent Salandria to a dog, noting that I have the greatest respect for him as a gentleman and a scholar of high esteem. But it is my opinion that Mr Salandria took his apologetic rhetoric to an uncomely extreme in his verbal submission to Specter’s station and position in the ranks of political power. Salandria was too gushing, and it was needless. He didn’t need to make such an embarrassing display to keep the conversation cordial

Frankly I don’t find Specter’s position at all admirable. I see him as a great villain, and a criminal accessory after the fact. Salandria had previously made the same charges himself. To imply that he was withdrawing such charges is rationally inexplicable, in my view.
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Based on classified documents and first-person interviews, a startling history of the American war on Vietnamese civilians

The American Empire Project
Winner of the Ridenhour Prize for Reportorial Distinction

Americans have long been taught that events such as the notorious My Lai massacre were isolated incidents in the Vietnam War, carried out by just a few “bad apples.” But as award-winning journalist and historian Nick Turse demonstrates in this groundbreaking investigation, violence against Vietnamese noncombatants was not at all exceptional during the conflict. Rather, it was pervasive and systematic, the predictable consequence of official orders to “kill anything that moves.”

Drawing on more than a decade of research into secret Pentagon archives and extensive interviews with American veterans and Vietnamese survivors, Turse reveals for the first time the workings of a military machine that resulted in millions of innocent civilians killed and wounded–what one soldier called “a My Lai a month.” Devastating and definitive, Kill Anything That Moves finally brings us face-to-face with the truth of a war that haunts America to this day.

“I think that the report, to those who have studied it closely, has collapsed like a house of cards, and I think the people who read it in the long-run future will see that. I frankly believe that we have shown that the [investigation of the] John F. Kennedy assassination was snuffed out before it even began, and that the fatal mistake the Warren Commission made was not to use its own investigators, but instead to rely on the CIA and FBI personnel, which played directly into the hands of senior intelligence officials who directed the cover-up.”~Senator Richard Schweiker (R-Pennsylvania) on Face the Nation in 1976.
. . . . .White House Efforts to Blunt 1975 Church Committee Investigation into CIA Abuses Foreshadowed Executive-Congressional Battles after 9/11

Members of the “Church Committee” meet in Washington, D.C., February 6, 1975. (Source: Henry Griffin / AP)
Advisers to President Ford Sought to Protect CIA’s Image Abroad by Having Its Capabilities “Cloaked in Mystery and Held in Awe”

Ford Administration Stratagem of Withholding Sensitive Intelligence, Spearheaded by Dick Cheney, Set Tone for Future Clashes between Claims of Secrecy and Public’s Right to Know

Washington, D.C., July 20, 2015 – Forty years ago this year, Congress’s first serious inquiry into CIA abuses faced many of the same political and bureaucratic obstructions as Senate investigators have confronted in assessing Intelligence Community performance since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Records posted today for the first time by the National Security Archive document the often rough-and-tumble, behind-the-scenes dynamics between Congress and the Executive Branch during the “Year of Intelligence” – highlighted by the investigations of the congressional Church and Pike committees.

Among White House and Intelligence Community stated concerns during the period of the Church and Pike inquiries were preserving the effectiveness of the CIA and reassuring future operatives who might fear their “heads may be on the block” for their actions, no matter how well-intentioned. But intelligence officials also worried that disclosures of agency operations would be “disastrous” for CIA’s standing in the world: “We are a great power and it is important that we be perceived as such,” a memo to the president warned, urging that “our intelligence capability to a certain extent be cloaked in mystery and held in awe.”

In 1975, it was then-Deputy Chief of Staff Dick Cheney who spearheaded the Ford White House’s hostile approach to Congress, which required the CIA to submit all proposed responses to Capitol Hill for prior presidential approval and featured the explicit intent to keep investigators away from the most sensitive records. Those events presaged the battles between the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) and the U.S. Intelligence Community since 2012 over plans to publish the former’s 6,000-page report on the CIA’s rendition, detention and interrogation program.

Thank you so very, very much for autographing my deluxe copy of your book, “Mandate for Change.” I appreciate your doing this.

The book is excellent. Although I confess that because of the pressures of South Vietnam and other matters, I have not read it all. I plan to complete it within day or two. It will occupy an important place in my library ……

In addition, I hope you are getting a royalty from sales of the book because I am a pretty good customer of yours, having now bought three copies …..

Warm personal regards and all good wishes.

Sincerely,

John A. McCone

General Dwight D. Eisenhower
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

followed by this:

JOHN ALEX MCCONE
3025 WHITEHAVEN STREET, N.W.
WASHINGTON 8, D.C.

23 December, 1963

Dear General,

I have just returned from Saigon and found some things there which I would like to discuss with you. Theiline and I plan to be at our house in San Marino from December 28 to January 2nd. I know your obligations will have you enormously busy when you are in Pasadena but perhaps there will be an opportunity for an hour together. It might even be possible for you and Mamie to slip away from the hotel and come to the house, as I am very anxious to have both of you see it.

I will call you when I arrive in Los Angeles. In the meantime, the warmest regards and my very best to you and Mamie in which Theiline joins me.

Sincerely,

John A. McCone

General Dwight D. Eisenhower
Eldorado Country Club
Palm Desert, California

Two years later McCone would rejoin the board of his engineering firm, military contractor Bechtel-McCone (which would merge with Haliburton decades later) along with CB Thornton, CEO of Litton Industries. Thornton and Robert McNamara were members of the Whiz Kids – the small elite clique of WWII Army Air Force veterans who went to work at Ford Motor Co. to pursue management science. Thornton helped persuade Brown Bros. Harriman partner Robert A. Lovett to propose McNamara to the post of Secretary of Defence at the time that John McCone served as the Director of Intelligence. .
. . . .
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JFK in Trauma Room One: The Missing Piece: Last Moments Before Death
Chief of Anesthesiology Dr. M. T. Pepper Jenkins led the team to resuscitate President Kennedy at Parkland Hospital, Nov. 22, 1963. THIS RARE FOOTAGE reveals many private moments with Mrs. Kennedy, and second-by-second efforts done to save the President – excerpts are from a formal presentation to an invited audience in Beverly Hills in 1993.
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This answers one question definitively, Jackie retrieved a portion of her husband’s brain when she crawled out on the trunk of the limo.
The description of the head-wound as “along the right side of the head is verified, and the fact that it did not show until the the hair and scalp was pulled aside. Add to this the fact that this portion of JFK’s brain was blown back onto the trunk, not forward, and we have an indication of the trajectory of the bullet; a shot from the front.
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INT:It’s June the eighth and I’m interviewing Roger Hilsman, for the Cold War series, first of all the program about Vietnam. So, if we can start off, can I ask you first, what was President Kennedy’s attitude to Vietnam? Why did he choose Vietnam as a place to make a stand?

ROGER HILSMAN: “He did not choose to make Vietnam a stand, that’s the whole point. The long answer is that Kennedy was a Catholic, Ngu Dinh Diem was a Catholic, the President of Vietnam and when Ngu Dinh Diem became President of Vietnam, American Catholics generally thought that this was a wonderful hero and should be backed. He came out there… Kennedy went out to Vietnam as a young Foreign Service officer and met as a young congressman, I should say, and met a young Foreign Service officer who was the head of their action section in the embassy. And this guy said that he didn’t believe that a Catholic, surrounded by Catholics in a country that was ninety five per cent Bhuddist was going to make it, and this shook Kennedy, as a very young congressman, a great deal. And many years later when he had decided… I mean, he used to say to me – I was Assistant Secretary for the Far East, so I was in charge of Vietnam – and he used to say to me, we’ll do everything we can to help them, but we will not fight, we will not send an American soldier to fight. And I said, well, you know, I said, I agree with you, but why did you reach this conclusion, ‘cos he knew nothing about (unintelligible), he told me this story that he’d been out in Vietnam as a young congressman and the man who influenced him became a great friend, but he said, I’ve thought about that very deeply and we’ll give ’em all the help we can, all the aid, all the arms, but we won’t fight there.” [Bolding mine – ww]

“approved plan for removing the rest within a matter of two or three months.”~Hilsman

“This is a new one I’ve never seen before and I thought I’d seen it all by now. The last “approved” plan of Kennedy on Vietnam was NSAM 263 and it most certainly does not say what Hilsman is claiming here.~Clarke

“he would not send troops. But then after …you remember the Buddhist crisis in the spring of ’63, this convinced Kennedy that Ngu Dinh Diem had no chance of winning and that we best we get out.”~Hilsman

I think Hilsman is playing loose with the facts here. JFK did send troops to SVN and sent the planes, helicopters and other equipment to fight the war. Again, if all the troops would be out in a few months as Hilsman claims why did JFK bother to approve the removal of Ngo Dinh Diem?”~Bill Clarke

As far as the Warren Commission Cult, Oswald did it alone, because he was a deranged nut looking for a place in history.

Those who think JFK was killed by a conspiracy perpetrated from the highest levels of the Military Industrial Complex, argue that Kennedy was going to pull out of Southeast Asia militarily, and this provides the motive for the military industrial complex to get Kennedy out of the way with a violent coup d’etat.

That is why those who argue the lone-nut bullshit need to take that motive out of the picture.
That is the nitty-gritty of the whole game the WC side is playing.

It is a loosing battle for them however. As has been shown from the longer historical perspective, John Kennedy was a radical for his entire adult life, and this is reflected in his own words, the Senate speech in 1957, his voting record, his speeches and confidential conversations during his presidency. Whatever “epiphany” John had occurred long before the Bay of Pigs, or the Missile Crisis – although they were certainly reinforcing events.

This is exactly why the narrow focus of the WC cult, to only talk about Dealey Plaza, to focus attention on Oswald, and to ignore who Kennedy the man actually was.
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History Will Not Absolve Us
Concerning the Facts and Consequences of the Tragic Death of President John F. Kennedy
November 23rd, 1963
by Fidel Castro

Always, when something very important has happened, national or international, we have
thought it desirable to speak to the people, to express our opinions. And in every such case to
express the orientation of the Government, the orientation of our Party, so that each one of us all
know the attitude we should adopt in each one of these situations.
It is true that we are somewhat accustomed to various types of unexpected events, important,
serious events, because since the victory of the Revolution our country has had to face a series of
problems, a series of situations that have prepared the people to carry forward their victorious
revolution.
Therefore, because of the events of yesterday in the United States in which the President was
murdered, because of the repercussion these events can have, because of the role that the United
States plays in the problems of international policy, because of this, we believe that we should make
a specially objective and calm analysis of these events and of their possible consequences.
The government of the United States, the former administration of Eisenhower and the
Kennedy administration, did not practice precisely a policy of friendship toward us. The policy of
both administrations was characterized by its aggressive, hostile, and implacable spirit toward our
country.
Our country was the victim of economic aggressions intended to cause the ruin of our
economy and the starvation of our people; it was the victim of all kinds of attacks that caused
bloodshed; hundreds of our compatriots have lost their lives, defending themselves from attacks of
U.S. imperialism, and not only this. The hostility and the aggressiveness of U.S. imperialism toward
our country took us to the brink of war which was fortunately avoided, took the world to the brink of
thermonuclear war…http://jfkfacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Castro-on-JFK-112363.pdf
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In 1963 Kennedy asked Lansdale to concentrate on the situation in Vietnam. However, it was not long before Lansdale was in conflict with General Maxwell Taylor, who was the military representative to the president. Taylor took the view that the war could be won by military power. He argued in the summer of 1963 that 40,000 US troops could clean up the Vietminh threat in Vietnam and another 120,000 would be sufficient to cope with any possible North Vietnamese or Chinese intervention.

Lansdale disagreed with this viewpoint. He had spent years studying the way Mao Zedong had taken power in China. He often quoted Mao of telling his guerrillas: “Buy and sell fairly. Return everything borrowed. Indemnify everything damaged. Do not bathe in view of women. Do not rob personal belongings of captives.” The purpose of such rules, according to Mao, was to create a good relationship between the army and its people. This was a strategy that had been adopted by the National Liberation Front. Lansdale believed that the US Army should adopt a similar approach. As Cecil B. Currey, the author of Edward Lansdale: The Unquiet American pointed out: “Lansdale was a dedicated anticommunist, conservative in his thoughts. Many people of like persuasion were neither as willing to study their enemy nor as open to adopting communist ideas to use a countervailing force. If for no other reason, the fact makes Lansdale stand out in bold relief to the majority of fellow military men who struggled on behalf of America in those intense years of the cold war.”
[…]
Lansdale continued to argue against Lyndon Johnson’s decision to try and use military power to win the Vietnam War. When General William Westmoreland argued that: “We’re going to out-guerrilla the guerrilla and out-ambush the ambush… because we’re smarter, we have greater mobility and fire-power, we have more endurance and more to fight for… And we’ve got more guts.” Lansdale replied: “All actions in the war should be devised to attract and then make firm the allegiance of the people.” He added “we label our fight as helping the Vietnamese maintain their freedom” but when “we bomb their villages, with horrendous collateral damage in terms of both civilian property and lives… it might well provoke a man of good will to ask, just what freedom of what Vietnamese are we helping to maintain?”http://spartacus-educational.com/COLDlansdale.htm
. . . .
Soon after taking office, Kennedy received a briefing by Edward Lansdale, who had been sent by the Defense Department to evaluate the situation in Vietnam. Lansdale reported to Kennedy that Vietnam was in critical condition and needed emergency treatment. Kennedy inherited a commitment of 600 American military advisers stationed in Vietnam. Kennedy authorized funding for additional training and maintenance of South Vietnamese troops. He created a task force for Vietnam. When asked if he was willing to send combat troops to stop the spread of Communism in Vietnam, Kennedy avoided answering the question. He sent Vice President Johnson to the region to ” show the flag” and demonstrate US support for the South Vietnamese government.

By summer, after the failed summit in Vienna and the fiasco of the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy felt he could not walk away from Vietnam. But he remained very reluctant to commit US troops. An April 28th memo by Ted Sorenson, said to reflect Kennedy’s thinking on Vietnam stated, ” There is no clearer example of a country that cannot be saved unless it saves itself “through increased popular support; governmental, economic and military reforms and reorganizations; and the encouragement of new political leaders” .
[…]
Opposing the military’s recommendations were Senate Majority leader Mike Mansfield, Kenneth Galbraith, George Ball and Averell Harriman. Kennedy refused to approve deployment of combat troops, but stepped up aid to the Diem regime and ordered a substantial increase in the number of advisers in Vietnam. In return, Kennedy demanded from Diem that the US advisers have a role in making all the important decisions. He also ordered the military to prepare contingency plans for the deployment of military combat forces.

By February 1962, there were 3,500 US combat advisers in Vietnam. They accompanied Vietnamese troops on missions which were to inexorably lead to US troops being drawn into combat. But, in early 1962 when the President was asked at a press conference if US troops were involved in combat, Kennedy gave a one word answer: ” No. ” The President, ambivalent about US involvement in Vietnam, feared an increased commitment.
[…]
In early 1963, Kennedy sent the head of the Intelligence Division of the State Department, Roger Hilsman, to assess the situation in Vietnam. Hilsman returned with a sobering report, that although things were going better than they had been a year earlier, winning the war was going to take longer and be much harder than the military had been reporting. By this time, there were 16,000 US advisors in Vietnam. Kennedy seemed to become even more skeptical of the US ability to obtain its objective in Vietnam and wanted to begin planning for a withdrawal. This withdrawal would come only after the November 1964 elections, for Kennedy feared the political fallout of a precipitous withdrawal from Vietnam. In the spring of 1963…
…Meanwhile, a new plan had been developed to oust Diem. Kennedy gave his reluctant approval, and in the early morning hours of November 1, Vietnamese Army forces staged the coup. When Diem asked for US help it was denied, as was his request for transport to leave the country. Diem and his wife were killed while in custody of the Vietnamese troops. Kennedy was genuinely upset at the deaths. In a recording he made for posterity on November 4, he took personal responsibility for their deaths. The day he left for Texas, November 21, 1963, President Kennedy told Senator Mike Mansfield that in early 1964 he ” wanted to organize an in-depth study of every possible option we’ve got in Vietnam, including how to get out of there. ”
Sadly, two days later, President Kennedy was assassinated. The vexing question of how to handle the situation in Vietnam would never be solved by Kennedy.http://www.historycentral.com/JFK/bio/Vietnam.html
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Vietnam Timeline with US involvement. This timeline begins in 1945. However I have a link to the page during the Kennedy administration to do with that context here:http://www.vietnamgear.com/war1961.aspx
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We recommend that:
1. General Harkins review with Diem the military changes necessary to complete the military campaign in the Northern and Central areas (I, II, and III Corps) by the end of 1964, and in the Delta (IV Corps) by the end of 1965. This review would consider the need for such changes as:
a. A further shift of military emphasis and strength to the Delta (IV Corps).
b. An increase in the military tempo in all corps areas, so that all combat troops are in the field an average of 20 days out of 30 and static missions are ended.
c. Emphasis on “clear and hold operations” instead of terrain sweeps which have little permanent value.
d. The expansion of personnel in combat units to full authorized strength.
e. The training and arming of hamlet militia to an accelerated rate, especially in the Delta.
f. A consolidation of the strategic hamlet program, especially in the Delta, and action to insure that future strategic hamlets are not built until they can be protected, and until civic action programs can be introduced.

2. A program be established to train Vietnamese so that essential functions now performed by U.S. military personnel can be carried out by Vietnamese by the end of 1965. It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel by that time.

3. In accordance with the program to train progressively Vietnamese to take over military functions, the Defense Department should announce in the very near future presently prepared plans to withdraw 1000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963. This action should be explained in low key as an initial step in a long-term program to replace U.S. personnel with trained Vietnamese without impairment of the war effort.http://www.jfklancer.com/NSAM263.html
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This is the complete “Report of McNamara-Taylor Mission to South Vietnam”. It was fundamental to National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) #263, approved by JFK on October 5, 1963. Kennedy approved the military recommendations contained in Section I B (1-3), below. NSAM #263 was the the culmination of many months of seeking a solution to the yawning quagmire of Vietnam that Kennedy had concluded must not be solved militarily by committing U.S. combat troops.
Kennedy had a great deal to do with the creation of this report. There had been many months of work already completed before he ever even sent McNamara and Taylor to Vietnam in late September to bring back the “report” which had already been created from the visit Major General Victor H. Krulak and a senior Foreign Service officer, Joseph Mendenhall, made to Vietnam in early September under Kennedy’s direction. JFK knew exactly what he wanted it to say, and dispatched Krulak knowing that he would come home with all the current data essential for final decision-making. But Kennedy wanted to move the decision level up to the top and so sent McNamara and Taylor. With the McNamara/Taylor report–which Krulak’s office wrote–that they publically gave to JFK upon their return, Kennedy had effectively laid the groundwork for the enunciation of his intended plans, formalized three days later in NSAM #263.

An excerpt from the book JFK The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy
by L. Fletcher Prouty
Birch Lane Press, 1992 – hard cover, 1st edition

from pages 272 – 283

As mentioned earlier, Diem had made it quite clear what his goals with the Strategic Hamlet program were. His position did not jibe with those who wanted to escalate the war in Indochina and who were not at all interested in the introduction of an ancient form of self-government into the battle-scarred countryside.

On top of this came Kennedy’s desire to get the United States out of Indochina by the end of 1965, as evidenced by his orchestration of a series of events such as the Krulak-Mendenhall visit to Vietnam in September 1963. By late summer, and certainly by the time of the McNamara-Taylor trip, closely held plans had progressed for the removal of the Diems from Saigon. President Kennedy had reached the decision that the United States should do all it could to train, equip, and finance the government of South Vietnam to fight its own war, but that this would be done for someone other than Ngo Dinh Diem.

On the same day that the President received this McNamara-Taylor report, Gen. Tran Van Don had his first “accidental” (it had been carefully planned) meeting with the CIA’s Lt. Col. Lucien Conein at Tan Son Nhut airport in Saigon. This was a meeting of great significance, and one that to this day has never been properly explained. General Don was the commander of the South Vietnamese army. He had been born and educated in France and had served in the French army during World War II. He and Conein were well acquainted.

Nearly twenty years later, in 1963, the CIA designated Conein, one of its most valuable agents in the Far East, to meet with his old friend of eighteen years, Cen. Tran Van Don, to arrange for the ouster of President Diem. Only ten years earlier, Gen. Edward G. Lansdale and Conein had worked hard to get Ngo Dinh Diem started as the newly assigned president of South Vietnam.

Conein’s task was to stay close enough to key Vietnamese to assure them that the United States would not interfere with their plan to move in as soon as President Diem had left Saigon, and to keep Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge and Conein’s own CIA associates informed.

The plan prepared by the United States had been carefully drawn to leave Diem no alternative except to leave on this scheduled trip. There was much discussion and argument among members of the Kennedy administration, who knew of the President’s intention to oust Diem once he had left the country. With Madame Nhu and Archbishop Thuc already in Europe, Diem and his brother were to follow to attend a meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

The evacuation plan, carefully orchestrated under Kennedy’s direction, broke down, and Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother were murdered. There have been many accounts of this coup d’etat. They do not tell the role that Kennedy played in the story, and many were created to cover the real plan and to protect those Vietnamese who had worked closely with the administration.

I was on duty in the Joint Chiefs of Staff section of the Pentagon on the day of the coup d’etat. My immediate boss, General Krulak, knew the full details of the plan to remove Diem from the scene by flying him and his brother out of Saigon. Krulak remained in contact with the White House as developments in Saigon were relayed. I can recall clearly the absolute shock in our offices when it was learned that Diem had not left on the proffered aircraft for Europe.

One of the most important narratives of this event was written by Edward G. Lansdale in his autobiography In the Midst of Wars. Few Americans, if any, knew Ngo Dinh Diem and the situation in Vietnam from 1954-68 better than Ed Lansdale. He wrote:
“As the prisons filled up with political opponents, as the older nationalist parties went underground, with the body politics fractured, Communist political cadre became active throughout South Vietnam, recruiting followers for action against a government held together mainly by the Can Lao elite rather than by popular support. The reaped whirlwind finally arrived in November 1963, when the nationalist opposition erupted violently, imprisoning many of the Can Loa and killing Diem, Nhu, and others. It was heartbreaking to be an onlooker to this tragic bit of history.”

On October 5, Kennedy made his formal decision. Newman quotes the minutes of the meeting that day:

The President also said that our decision to remove 1,000 U.S. advisors by December of this year should not be raised formally with Diem. Instead the action should be carried out routinely as part of our general posture of withdrawing people when they are no longer needed. (Emphasis added.)

The passage illustrates two points: (a) that a decision was in fact made on that day, and (b) that despite the earlier announcement of McNamara’s recommendation, the October 5 decision was not a ruse or pressure tactic to win reforms from Diem (as Richard Reeves, among others, has contended3) but a decision to begin withdrawal irrespective of Diem or his reactions.

(3) On October 11, the White House issued NSAM 263, which states:

The President approved the military recommendations contained in section I B (1-3) of the report, but directed that no formal announcement be made of the implementation of plans to withdraw 1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963.

In other words, the withdrawal recommended by McNamara on October 2 was embraced in secret by Kennedy on October 5 and implemented by his order on October 11, also in secret. Newman argues that the secrecy after October 2 can be explained by a diplomatic reason. Kennedy did not want Diem or anyone else to interpret the withdrawal as part of any pressure tactic (other steps that were pressure tactics had also been approved). There was also a political reason: JFK had not decided whether he could get away with claiming that the withdrawal was a result of progress toward the goal of a self-sufficient South Vietnam.

The alternative would have been to withdraw the troops while acknowledging failure. And this, Newman argues, Kennedy was prepared to do if it became necessary. He saw no reason, however, to take this step before it became necessary. If the troops could be pulled while the South Vietnamese were still standing, so much the better.4 But from October 11 onward the CIA’s reporting changed drastically. Official optimism was replaced by a searching and comparatively realistic pessimism. Newman believes this pessimism, which involved rewriting assessments as far back as the previous July, was a response to NSAM 263. It represented an effort by the CIA to undermine the ostensible rationale of withdrawal with success, and therefore to obstruct implementation of the plan for withdrawal. Kennedy, needless to say, did not share his full reasoning with the CIA.

(4) On November 1 there came the coup in Saigon and the assassination of Diem and Nhu. At a press conference on November 12, Kennedy publicly restated his Vietnam goals. They were “to intensify the struggle” and “to bring Americans out of there.” Victory, which had figured prominently in a similar statement on September 12, was no longer on the list.

“..the fiercely anti-Communist Joseph Alsop, who in late 1954 visited a Communist-controlled area in Vietnam as the French were disengaging after fighting nine years to retain their colony—a struggle 80 percent paid for by the US in its last phase—and Washington was creating its chosen regime under Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon:
“It was difficult for me, as it is for any Westerner, to…imagine a Communist government that was also a popular government and almost a democratic government…. The Viet Minh [Ho Chi Minh’s forces] could not possibly have carried on the resistance for one year, let alone nine years, without the people’s strong, united support.”

1. Let’s take stock of five common myths about the state of the debate itself.
The belief that secret plotters killed Kennedy was first made popular by Oliver Stone’s 1992 movie, JFK.

Popular belief in a conspiracy was widespread within a week of Kennedy’s murder. Between November 25 and 29, 1963, University of Chicago pollsters asked more than 1,000 Americans whom they thought was responsible for the president’s death. By then, the chief suspect, Oswald — a leftist who had lived for a time in Soviet Union — had been shot dead while in police custody by Jack Ruby, a local hoodlum with organized crime connections.

While the White House, the FBI, and the Dallas Police Department all affirmed that Oswald had acted alone, 62 percent of respondents said they believed that more than one person was involved in the assassination. Only 24 percent thought Oswald had acted alone. Another poll taken in Dallas during the same week found 66 percent of respondents believing that there had been a plot. There were no JFK conspiracy theories in print at that time. Oliver Stone was in high school.

Since 2000, five tenured academic historians have published books on JFK’s assassination. Four of the five concluded that a conspiracy was behind the 35th president’s murder.

David Kaiser, a diplomatic historian at the Naval War College, and the author of a 2008 book, The Road to Dallas: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy, concluded that Kennedy was killed in plot involving disgruntled CIA operatives and organized crime figures. Michael Kurtz of Southeastern Louisiana University came to the same conclusion in his 2006 book, The JFK Assassination Debates: Lone Gunman Versus Conspiracy.

In a 2005 book, Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why, Gerald McKnight of Hood College suggested that a high-level plot involving senior U.S. intelligence officials was probably responsible for the president’s death. In his 2003 book about photographic evidence, The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK’s Assassination, David Wrone of the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point argued that the famous amateur film footage of the assassination proves that Kennedy was hit by gunfire from two different directions. Wrone did not advocate a theory of who was responsible.

A fifth historian, Robert Dallek of UCLA, wrote a 2003 biography of Kennedy, An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963. While not about the assassination as such, An Unfinished Life embraced the Warren Commission’s lone-gunman finding, relying squarely on Gerald Posner’s 1994 anti-conspiratorial best-seller Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK.

3. No one high-up in the U.S. government ever thought there was a conspiracy behind JFK’s murder.

In fact, many senior U.S. officials concluded that there had been a plot but rarely talked about it openly.

The president’s brother Robert and widow Jacqueline also believed that he had been killed by political enemies, according to historians Aleksandr Fursenko and Tim Naftali. In their 1999 book on the Cuban missile crisis, One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958-1964, they reported that William Walton — a friend of the First Lady — went to Moscow on a previously scheduled trip a week after JFK’s murder. Walton carried a message from RFK and Jackie for their friend, Georgi Bolshakov, a Russian diplomat who had served as a back-channel link between the White House and the Kremlin during the October 1962 crisis: RFK and Jackie wanted the Soviet leadership to know that “despite Oswald’s connections to the communist world, the Kennedys believed that the president was felled by domestic opponents.”

In the Senate, Democrats Richard Russell of Georgia and Russell Long of Louisiana both rejected official accounts of the assassination. In the executive branch, Joseph Califano, the General Counsel of Army in 1963 and later Secretary of Health Education and Welfare, concluded that Kennedy had been killed by a conspiracy.* In the White House, H.R. Haldeman, chief of staff to President Richard Nixon, wanted to reopen the JFK investigation in 1969. Nixon wasn’t interested.

Suspicion persisted in the upper echelons of the U.S. national security agencies, as well. Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, chief of Pentagon special operations in 1963 (and later an adviser to Stone), believed that there had been a plot.

Winston Scott, chief of the CIA’s station in Mexico City at the time of Kennedy’s murder and an ultra-conservative Agency loyalist, rejected the Warren Commission’s findings about a trip that Oswald had taken to Mexico six weeks before the assassination. Scott concluded in an unpublished memoir that Oswald had, indeed, been just a patsy.

None of these figures was a paranoid fantasist. To the contrary, they constituted a cross section of the American power elite in 1963. Neither did they talk about a JFK conspiracy for public consumption; they talked about it only reservedly, in confined circles.

4. Former Los Angeles County prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi refuted all JFK conspiracy theories in Reclaiming History.

In the course of 1,600 pages Bugliosi effectively refuted many unfounded conspiracy scenarios and reasserted the lone gunman conclusions of the Warren Commission. But he has never engaged the extensive scholarship of Commission skeptics such as journalist David Talbot, historian Kaiser, historian John Newman, or biographer Anthony Summers, or analyzed the innovative research of attorney William Simpich.

Kaiser, author of seven books on U.S. history, notes that Bugliosi’s prosecutorial approach limits the scope of his historical analysis: “He falls back on the old argument ‘no one could have ever used Ruby and Oswald in a conspiracy’ which relieves him of the necessity of addressing any of the conspiracy evidence seriously.”

5. All the CIA’s records related to the Kennedy assassination have been made public.

The agency acknowledges that it currently holds thousands of pages on Kennedy’s murder that the public has never seen. The CIA disclosed the existence of the still-secret JFK files while responding to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, filed as it happens by me, seeking the release of other records related to the assassination.

In a sworn affidavit, Delores Nelson, the CIA’s chief information officer, stated that the Agency has approximately 1,100 assassination-related documents that it plans to keep under wraps until 2017, if not longer. These files — containing more than 2,000 pages of material — cannot be made public for reasons, Nelson says, of national security.

In other words, somewhere in the Washington metropolitan area there is a collection of CIA documents related to JFK’s murder that, if collated, would stand about ten inches tall. None of those documents has ever been seen by the U.S. Congress or the National Archives, let alone by journalists, historians, bloggers, Oliver Stone, Tom Hanks, or the general public.

INTO THE WIND: THE KENNEDY ADMINISTRATION AND THE USE OF HERBICIDES IN SOUTH VIETNAM by Evelyn Frances Krache Morris, AM

This study investigates the origins of Operation Ranch Hand, the United States’
aerial defoliation and crop destruction program in South Vietnam. Although Agent
Orange is the best-known of the formulas employed, the decision to use chemicals in
South Vietnam preceded Agent Orange’s 1965 debut by several years. President John
F. Kennedy authorized defoliation missions in November 1961. At the behest of the
United States military, the Ambassador to South Vietnam, and South Vietnamese
President Ngô Đình Diệm, Ranch Hand expanded in 1962 to include crop destruction.
The purpose of this research is to explore why the administration chose to use an
untried and possibly illegal weapon in an undeclared war. The need for certainties in an
increasingly ambiguous and frustrating conflict contributed to the belief that Ranch
Hand was more practical and effective than it was. Even as Ranch Hand’s shortfalls
became apparent, the administration adhered more and more closely to the agendas of
the military and of Diệm who, for different reasons, promoted Ranch Hand as
reassuringly successful

DCI John McCone and the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy
David Robarge
“(U) McCone returned to Headquarters
at around 1530, summoned the
CIA Executive Committee, asked the
‘Intelligence Community’s Wau:h
Committee to convene at the Pentagon,
issued orders for all stations and
bases to report any signs of a conspiracy
and to ~hall Soviet personnel,
especially intelligence officers,
for indications that the Soviet Union
was trying to take advantage of the
dismay in Washington.
(U) The immediate reaction at
Langley, as elsewhere in the US government,
was to sUspect that a foreign.
probably communist-directed,
effort to destabilize the United States
might be underway. Richard Helms
recalled that “[w]e all went to baUie
stations over the possibility that this
might be a plot-and who was pulling
the strings. We were very busy
sending messages all over the world
to pick up anything that might indi-
(U) Lee Hltvey Oswald
Photo: UPI/BeUman
cate that a conspiracy had been
funned t9 kill the President of the
United States-and then what was to
come next” One of the first cables
was the following message Helms
sent to all CIA stations overseas…”~Robarge

His new job on the commission gave Dulles an opportunity to connect with old friends, such as … British novelist Rebecca West. In March, Dulles wrote West, beseeching her to draw on her fertile imagination to come up with possible motives for Oswald’s crime. The commission was so baffled by the question that Warren even suggested leaving that part of the report blank.